Love Sprung from Winter
by adoranymph
Summary: Two broken hearts, one turned cold by the cruelties of the world, one built by human hands, meet in the depths of an eternal winter. Despite this, they fell in love, as if neither had a choice in the matter. Kiritsugu/Irisviel. Based on the Drama CDs from the Fate/Zero I Box Set written by Gen Urobuchi.
1. Prologue

He supposed that, given the general pattern of his life, he oughtn't be so shocked that it had come to yet another loss of one he loved so dearly. Still, she had been the hope he had been fighting for since the beginning of this War, and to have things turn out this way, after all he'd been through to get to this point, it felt like the cruelest pain of all, only because it was a joy that had been twisted into a betrayal to his already exhausted heart. And the fact that he had failed one of the last people on Earth who cared what happened to him.

All the same, he swore in that freezing, snow-storming wood that this would be the last pain he would feel.

"Ilya…please forgive me," he whispered underneath the tirade of the wind.

And then, much to Kiritsugu Emiya's surprise, he thought of Saber, and the last he heard of her, screaming for him to take back his order to her to destroy the Holy Grail, before the blinding light of Excalibur swallowed her away. That scream had echoed the same one his own heart had made twice in his life, both preceding the pull of a gun trigger—once before killing his father, and once before killing his foster-mother, Nathaia Kiminski. A scream he'd been able to ignore from the first.

And now….

With nothing else left, he could only utter a mirthless, bitter laugh. "Oh Saber. You fool."

Even now, even though his Command Seals were long gone, Kiritsugu could sense that Saber—that King Arturia Pendragon—still desired the Grail, somewhere in Time, that she still longed for it, corrupted as it was.

But then she would probably desire it even if he'd had time to tell her such. She would only believe in its corruption if she were to witness it for herself, as he did.

In truth, he was just as big of a fool as she was, because a part of what she had stood for had once burned so desperately inside him. Perhaps it was the reason he'd paused to watch on the grassy bank, just for a moment, when she had taken up Excalibur in all of its golden splendor during the Mion River Battle.

At the core though, his greatest suffering sprung from the fact that he had fallen in love with someone he shouldn't have.


	2. Chapter One - Mage Killer and Maiden

**Chapter One**

**Mage Killer and Maiden**

For the Einzberns, it had simply been convenient, but for Kiritisugu, it would feel like another form of rebellion that for once held beauty rather than ugliness, even if it was a fractured beauty.

But he certainly had no way of preparing himself for it. She was, after all, what they called a "homunculus".

For his part, Kiritsugu was not particularly familiar with the art of alchemy: it wasn't something he needed in his function as an assassin, as he'd earned the moniker of "Mage Killer" through effectively shedding the blood of many a mage in _un_magelike ways. Many of his targets had gifted him with expressions of bewilderment and utter shock upon coming face-to-face with their death in his dark, vacant eyes.

So meeting a homunculus was a foreign enough situation for him as it was. More than that, but this crimson-eyed, silver-haired likeness of a woman evoked in Kiritsugu a strange enthrallment bordering on full-fledged fascination. He first saw her in the tube in which Jubstacheit von Einzbern—or Acht—had created her, but while Jubstacheit was talking, she opened her eyes within the fluid surrounding her to reveal her uniquely colored irises.

Maybe it was because they reminded him so much of blood.

Later, when he actually got to speak to her, it seemed by the way she sat in the chair by the fire, staring straight ahead with the blank prettiness of a doll, that she might not have even known how to respond to human speech. In his strategic frame of mind, he found himself muttering under his breath as he examined her, going on about how confusing it was that the vessel for the Holy Grail was this alchemically created female hominid as opposed to a simple cup.

Then those crimson eyes flicked his way.

Kiritsugu took a step back, but quickly recovered in his relief that she seemed to be able to respond to basic stimuli. Then he proceeded to ask the homunculus if she indeed understood him, to which she replied in the affirmative, addressing him by his full name as any machine might do.

Here, Kiritsugu became slightly annoyed, and from there he turned quite irksome when it was clear that this thing would be useless in a fight, in spite of the self-preservation instincts Jubstacheit had given her. Or what she automatically assessed to be instincts anyway, which was made clear when he struck her and she did nothing to block him.

Even as he helped her to her feet, he coldly declared that it might be better to simply destroy her and create a new vessel. Yet she somehow came to the conclusion that between the two of them, she was the stronger being. Overcome with frustration, Kiritsugu stalked out into the hall, desperate for the icy air outside, his hands quivering against his will as he shook out the cigarette he was gasping for.

The following day it was like Hell had frozen over as a huge snowstorm hit the forest which surrounded the Einzbern castle. Kiritsugu's heels at the very least had cooled enough that he could speak with Jubstacheit with a mostly civil tongue, but in all honesty he should have expected a mishap like this, mixing with these mages whose only desire for the Grail was the Third Magic.

One thing Kiritsugu had going for him was how he couldn't help relishing just a little in the fact that he had no intention of asking such a wish of the Holy Grail when he won it. No, he had his own design in mind, one that would scrub his bloody hands clean with the utterance of eight small words:

"I wish for true peace upon the Earth."

The miracle that was the Holy Grail was his last hope for that salvation, and then these idiots could move on from their obsession with something so vainglorious.

In the meantime, they had this homunculus they had forced upon him to answer for.

Jubstacheit was apologetic, though in a very prideful way. Yet as Kiritsugu was going in with the intention of having a new vessel created, Jubstacheit informed him that, given circumstances, he and the other Einzbern alchemists had decided to give this newest homunculus a test that would determine her true durability.

That test was to throw her naked out into the middle of the freezing woods outside and leave her to the mercy of the starving wolves, as they had done with countless other "failed" homunculi. According to Jubstacheit, Kiritsugu should have no complaints as to her durability if this one were in fact to return to the castle alive.

But as much as Kiritsugu was frustrated with this homunculus, he did not forget the expression of pain on her face when he struck her the day before, nor how pitiable it was to see her sprawled and helpless-looking on the floor. Jubstacheit's words triggered something in Kiritsugu's mind that had him transplant that image into the snowstorm outside, and he could quite clearly picture a pack of ravenous wolves tearing at the homunculus, staining the white snow with blood as crimson as her eyes. The blood of a girl this mage had created himself and would toss aside so easily just to prove a point. Certainly she was a homunculus but…she clearly felt pain.

And then words from a distant memory that had always haunted Kiritsugu surfaced, unbidden.

_"Tell me, Kerry, what kind of man do you want to be?" _

It was enough to not only express his disgust to Jubstacheit, but also to spur him into action. Actually, given his usual manner of careful planning and considering all variables that might come into play in a situation, this was the first time in a long time that he could remember acting so purely on impulse. Ignoring Jubstacheit's confused protests, Kiritsugu strode out of the castle with a sense of purpose that was different from what normally drove him. This time, instead of determinedly fighting against a crushing weight and self-imposed responsibility with the thought of billions of people crying out for salvation, he pressed onward with only one being—one person—on his mind.

After that, it was probably the cold that prevented any further logical thinking. Had it not been so, Kiritsugu might've reverted back to his usual pattern of considering things from a practical, non-emotional perspective, which for years had been his effective if ironic philosophy on fighting—ironic because even as he did not let emotion cloud his judgment, part of his ultimate drive was in fact the very passionate emotion of anger. Here though, the anger was somehow awakened as a sleeping beast, and he based his current actions entirely and actively on that emotion, rather than forcing himself not to feel anything because of it. His whole body trembled with it as he fought his way through the snow and wind in search of that homunculus.

Actually it was almost freeing, devoting himself to a singular task such as this, and a much simpler one to be sure than the grander one he'd had in mind since boyhood. There was a fairy tale element to it too, helped by the Germanic landscape of white silver around him: the knight who braved unspeakable dangers to rescue the princess.

No, that was delusional.

For all of the lives he had taken, each death had been something to serve a higher purpose, never because he simply wanted to kill them, never because he rejoiced in their demises. Not a bit. That was precisely why he could be so cold about it. Actually it was harder to divest himself of the sorrow of it, even when taking lives of people who, for all intents, deserved to die.

To let someone die, even a homunculus, was another matter. Not when he could save that life instead.

He pushed through the wood for some time, ducking under tree branches and any place that offered shelter as a means of finding the homunculus, in addition to keeping an eye out for movement in the snow. Given her silver hair and ivory skin, and the fact that he didn't even know a name for her to call out, it was going to be difficult to spot her in all this white.

Unless she was covered in blood.

But then he caught the sound of howling wolves, and he followed that like it was a siren.

Up ahead there was a burst of light, a result of what Kiritsugu could only guess was the homunculus' alchemy. When the trees opened up into a clearing, he caught the fleeing tails of the pack of wolves that had been howling, but there was no sign of the homunculus.

At least, not at first glance.

Being a skilled and master hunter, Kiritsugu was hardly dissuaded by the lack of obvious evidence pointing to the homunculus' presence. Already he imagined that the woman was likely injured and had crawled away to whatever closest shelter the wilderness could offer her, having successfully fended off the wolves.

Well, he'd have to give her credit for that. But still, if she was going to always come out of a situation worse for wear, she would be nearly as, if not just as, useless to him as she would not being able to fight at all.

Sure enough, he picked up a thin trail of blood threaded insubstantially into the snow. Following that, he tracked the homunculus down to where he found her curled up underneath the cage of low bracken. And here she had already passed out from the pain caused by her bleeding leg wound.

She was the very picture of a broken and abandoned doll, her eyelashes fringing her cheekbones dusted with fresh snow. Despite her desperate situation and Kiritsugu's frustration, he couldn't escape the fact that once again he felt a swell of enthrallment in seeing her. That she was lovely did not slip past his notice, and here she was, so wrecked and so lost, it evoked a surging pressure in his chest akin to the splintering of ice preparing to melt.

And it echoed the pain that had struck him when he'd witnessed the painful vampiric transformation of Shirley, a girl he had loved in childhood. The first girl.

"Tell me, Kerry," she had asked him, "what kind of man do you want to be?"

He felt again like that boy he had once been, who had looked at Shirley one day and realized that he liked looking at and being with her. The form of this homunculus was beautiful indeed, and such cruelty had marred that beauty unnecessarily, leaving her as cold and frightened as an orphaned baby bird.

The pressure in Kiritsugu's chest increased, and, with a kind of reverence that felt foreign to him, yet somehow warm within him, he knelt, reached underneath the bracken, and gently pulled out the unconscious woman. He wrapped her up in his long black coat to warm her and lifted her up into his arms as he stood. He shivered, though not only because of the cold, but also because of how fragile the homunculus felt.

Not hours before, he would have felt nothing but more frustration for what he had come across here today. But there was no frustration now that he could find as he strode back to the Einzbern castle, cradling the homunculus against his chest while her leg wound left a trail of scarlet drips in the snow.

Instead, there was just that relief at having found her alive.

It was almost like what he might have felt…had he been able to save Shirley as well…all those years ago.


	3. Chapter Two - A Second Impression

**Chapter Two**

**A Second Impression**

Since she was a homunculus, there was no point in summoning a doctor, since a doctor could do nothing to treat such a being. That being the case, all that really needed doing was a Healing Spell performed on her leg and time given for her to rest from her ordeal. As it was, the Einzbern maids gifted in such arts saw to that.

Kiritsugu, for his part, had no patience to deal with the dumbfounded and slightly annoyed Jubstacheit. But then he somehow only felt his own lingering feelings of frustration settle when he returned to the homunculus's room to see how she was faring. It occurred to him then as he took in the sight of her sleeping that the mere presence of her was having a surprisingly calming effect on him.

Her face was only lit by the glow of the roaring fireplace nearby, and though Kiritsugu had no particular intention in mind, he found himself suspended in a moment where he lost all sense of the passage of time as he watched her slumber. She was so…strange, this homunculus. She looked like any human really, despite her strange hair and eyes, but…she acted so much like a machine. And that should have been fine, because in essence her primary function was that of a tool, and yet…her likeness to a machine almost felt no different from how Kiritsugu himself had conducted his way of life for many years now.

Concerning this homunculus and what she needed to do, versus her attitude towards it, this machine-like nature of hers…something about it needed to be…fixed. It was clearly going to turn into a problem for him on the field of battle when it came time to fight for the Grail. This understandably bothered Kiritsugu, though he couldn't think why this original design of hers further proved that it would only backfire on him rather than work in his favor, seeing as how he himself worked like a machine and was quite capable of carrying out his own works as an assassin. Even his assistant, Maiya Hisau, worked the same way.

Maybe it was because this was the only way to modify the homunculus's efficacy as a tool.

He was just thinking of stepping out again when the homunculus stirred, and she opened her crimson eyes. Her voice was a weak thread of sound as she asked: "Where am…I?"

The pressure in Kiritsugu's chest returned, struck again with that strange fascination those eyes evoked in him. This caused his voice to come out kinder than it had before when addressing her, if still quite gruff. "Try not to talk," he told her. "Get some more rest and you'll be all right again."

"Why am I…in the castle?"

Kiritsugu told her what happened, and he experienced another stroke of annoyance at her lack of responding to Jubstacheit's cruelty with what ought to have been anger. But the homunculus didn't understand about anger. While Kiritsugu tried to tell her, something rose up within him, making his blood grow hot and thick. The brief moment of kindness left him as he grew restless and irritated. But not wanting to be impertinent, he sought the solace of the window instead, leaning against the edge of the frame, brooding over the frosted, storming landscape.

It wasn't just Jubstacheit—or Acht, for short—with whom the homunculus ought to be angry, but with him, Kiritsugu, as well. After all, it was his complaint that had led to all this. Something in Kiritsugu, oddly enough, longed to know what it was like to face a blinding fury. Certainly he had faced many zealous and impassioned fighters on the field of battle, but specializing in sniping and bombing created situations where he observed, but seldom experienced, the fury of another.

If he could provoke a reaction—

His long-buried anger, reawakened, seemed to be taking on the physical form of a creature desperate to claw its way out of him. He had to bequeath this anger to this homunculus if she was to know how to truly survive on her own. He had to prove her wrong about such things.

The homunculus though made no secret of her confusion. She forced herself up into a sitting position, perhaps wishing to address Kiritsugu on a more equal plane of vision. Kiritsugu turned his cold, furious eyes on her, with a mind to force her back under the blankets, only to decide against it when he could tell just by looking at her that she wasn't going to listen. Clothed again in a sleeping gown of ivory white, Kiritsugu was reminded all the more by the way her silver hair spilled over her shoulders hat this woman had been made to look very lovely indeed, just as he'd observed when he'd found her stripped bare out in the snow. Here again, he felt a lick of his frustration with Acht, because it was clear that the head of the Einzbern family had been more concerned with creating a beautiful doll rather than a tool for war.

But then the pressure in his chest came back as she raised those red eyes to his dark ones. Kiritsugu heaved a sigh as he tried to shake off the feeling.

Objectively, he supposed that in addition to knowing anger as a necessary means of survival, the homunculus ought to know something of concern for and pride in herself, since clearly she possessed nothing of the sort, not even towards her role as the Grail Vessel. He told her of these things with an unintentional amount of insistence, though he would write it off at the time as just his determination to see that she understood how important it was to be driven by such feelings—by anger, as well as concern for and pride in one's existence—in order to maximize and strengthen the motivation to survive.

And that's how Kiritsugu decided to take it upon himself to teach her all about these things. To do this, he would have to teach her about how the real world worked. Obviously, she was not permitted to leave the confines of the Einzbern castle, but that didn't mean he couldn't bring as much of the outside world to her as was possible. The wealth he'd amassed as an assassin and as a mercenary left him with practically unlimited resources, which was partly why he was always able to do his job a little better each time—as money grew, he was able to acquire better guns, better intel. And seeing as how he had no intention of deviating from his goal of attaining the Holy Grail, he had all this time on his hands to invest such money and time in teaching this homunculus the ways of the world.

"But I should refer to you by a name," he said, folding his arms authoritatively. "Do you have one? Not, 'vessel', and not 'homunculus', but an actual name of your own?"

The homunculus blinked, and then, she smiled as she said: "I'm…Irisviel. Irisviel von Einzbern."

_How did she—? _

After all that, Kiritsugu wasn't expecting the woman to actually smile. Could it be that within her, she did in fact possess one small speck of pride? Pride in having her own name, Irisviel?

It wasn't much, but it was a starting point, and Kiritsugu began to feel a little more positive about this whole thing already.

* * *

><p>On the first clear morning in the wake of the snowstorm, Kiritsugu was able to enjoy a proper morning smoke. He lit it outside in the crisp air on the front grounds of the castle, taking a long drag and exhaling it in a ghostly stream towards the icy blue sky. It was moments like these where he could empty himself even more, and not have to think of anything at all.<p>

But as he lifted the cigarette to his lips again, he caught a movement at the drapes of Irisviel's room. He found Irisviel herself staring out of the window, and her gaze found his.

Then Irisviel tilted her head to one side, much like a curious bird in a cage who knows nothing of what it means to be free. In a way, that was precisely what she was.

_If she knew what that really meant,_ Kiritsugu thought. _If I could show her…._

And then he knew just where he wanted to begin as far as teaching her about the world was concerned.

* * *

><p>"Well, Kiritsugu Emiya, if you feel that this all necessary for what you need in order to succeed in our mission to obtain the Grail in nine years, I shall leave you to it," was Acht's reply when Kiritsugu disclosed to him his intentions. "I allow the freedom to call in whatever resources you need as you proceed with this. I will not stand in your way, nor will any of the others of my family."<p>

It was a very small reference, but the tone in which Acht refered to the Einzberns made it clear that though Irisviel bore the surname as well, she was not technically included in the clan. It was another way Kiritsugu failed to understand the nuances of alchemy—even if Irisviel was not human, had no conventional sort of "birth", she still shared cells and genetic traits with the Einzbern ancestor, Lord Justica.

That being said, Kiritsugu first approached his lessons with the homunculus called Irisviel with as much mechanical thought as any other task to which he was put: the only difference was that instead of handling cold weaponry, he had to access emotional triggers. The best tools he had at his disposal at present for such things were recounts of his experiences in the world. He would not make the mistake of exposing his own buried wounds if he could help it, short of alluding to them if need be, but he possessed no shortage of other people he had watched fall into despair—people he had wanted to save but couldn't, either because it was beyond his power, or because it was the only way to stack the odds of saving the most people as possible in favor of the majority, forcing the minority to suffer in their place, regardless of whether they "deserved" it.

Irisviel, having recovered rather quickly from her ordeal in the forest, was sat up straight in that same private library where the two of them had first properly met. When Kiritsugu joined her, he kept his distance, leaning against the mantelpiece over the fireplace. He closed his eyes for a moment as he conjured the first memory he had in mind to relate, even as he felt Irisviel watching him with utterly keen curiosity.

"If you want to know about anger, about what it means to have the life that is so precious to you destroyed," he began, opening his eyes and gazing fixedly into the depths of the fire, "so that you can develop what is needed in order to fight, and survive, and win, I must tell you of those like myself who gain this power from their anger.

"There was a man I knew, with whom I fought in the ongoing wars in Sierra Leone—have you heard of it? Sierra Leone?"

"No. Tell me about it."

Kiritsugu looked at the homunculus at last, and then beckoned her to follow him to where a map of the world hung on the wall. He pointed the small country of Sierra Leone out to her on the northeastern part of the continent of Africa. "It's hot there. Hot as hell. Hotter probably."

"I am aware of a place called 'Hell'."

"Good. You have a basis of understanding."

"Yes."

"Well, apart from being hot, there are wars there, over diamonds, over children. People dying left and right. And there was a man I knew, whose son was stolen from him."

"Why?"

"Children were often rounded up and used as soldiers in these diamond wars."

Kiritsugu thought a moment of Maiya, of the day he'd found her on a battlefield in the dark heart of a country so war-torn it hardly had a name of its own anymore, of the way she had stared at him so emptily when he'd offered her hand to help her to her feet, the cut she'd suffered to her forehead completing the image of one who no longer cried tears of water, only blood. Yet she had awakened an impulse of kindness within him, even after all these years when she remained so empty and mechanical. When they both did.

He went on with recounting his story to Irisviel. "In his desperate quest to regain his son, he asked if I might help him, and though I did what I could, events culminated in the man ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Do you understand that? Crime and punishment, and what it means to be punished for something that was not your fault?"

"I have a basic knowledge of right and wrong," Irisviel informed Kiritsugu. "And I know that it is wrong to imprison someone for a crime that isn't their fault."

"Yes." Kiritsugu moved away from the map and returned to the fireplace to poke the flames a little. "This man of whom I speak now…he never saw his son again. He died full of rage and despair in the prison cell where they left him to rot. That's all I learned of his fate. I know nothing of what happened to his son, but if I had to hazard a guess…judging by how things tend to go there…his son is probably dead too." This time he stabbed at the embers in the fire, though his hand remained steady.

For a moment, Irisviel was quiet, but Kiritsugu could almost feel her thinking very hard about all he had just told her. She moved with strange caution behind him as she resumed her seat in her chair and went on thinking.

Kiritsugu would not speak until she had something to say.

And then—

"This story," Irisviel said, "is about despair. It evoked anger in the man who suffered that despair."

"Yes. And I…relate to his pain."

"So you have known pain?"

"Yes."

"And loss?"

"Yes."

"And this is the source of your anger?"

"Yes."

"But it is not physical pain?"

"No. It's something you feel intangibly. Though…." Kiritsugu's voice tailed away a moment as he felt the pull of his painful memories.

"'Though', what?" Irisviel pressed.

Kiritsugu shook his head. "Though it can be bad enough that there can be a physical reaction. You would feel it…in here." He turned to Irisviel at last and lightly tapped his chest, right over where his heart was. Sometimes he even felt mildly intrigued that he didn't get a hollow metal sound instead when he did something like that.

Then Irisviel said, "I see," laying a hand over her own heart, a heart that wasn't a natural human one but a constructed imitation, if a good one.

Kiritsugu narrowed his eyes at her. "No. No, you don't see. You won't until you understand what it means to have appreciation for your own life only to have it ripped apart."

"But was this not the point of your recounting this story for me?" Irisviel protested.

Kiritsugu looked away from her, gazed back into the fire. "I saw them together, the man and his son, before all that tragedy happened. They were happy. If I could…."

His voice tailed away again as he recalled that moment, that happy nostalgia that had caused him a moment's anguish before he'd hardened his resolve and pulled the trigger on own his father, despite the screams of his heart.

Yet as always, he managed to block off the feeling itself quite easily, and to Irisviel he must've appeared as emotionless as she herself was. But now that he had found his answer in seeking the Holy Grail for he miracle he needed to save the world, it wouldn't be long before he could divest himself of the burden he had taken on. The dark sins he had stained his soul with would be repaid in kind when he achieved that end. When he had the Grail in hand and could see that his wish was fulfilled, all that the world required of him would be accomplished, and he would be free to burn in the fires of his own bloody deeds.

That was his plan, anyway, and in order to carry it through, he had to harden his resolve more than ever before, empty himself of everything. Nine more years, and then it would finally be over. Maybe then…he could find some modicum of peace.

Until then….

"Kiritsugu," Irisviel piped up from where she continued to observe him in her seat.

Kiritsugu looked up at her from the fire, the ultimate emptiness in his heart threatening to consume him entirely.

She had that look of a curious bird again. "If you don't wish to speak of this…if it…makes you sad…."

Kiritsugu couldn't help a mirthless laugh somehow and poked at the fire again. "I'm fine either way. I've learned to deal with this kind of thing."

"How?"

"By denying myself the indulgence of feeling such things at all. It's the only way I've been able to act on my anger, without letting it poorly affect my judgment. I act on it, but I force myself not to feel it as I do so. It's a bit of a paradox, I suppose."

"So anger can be a weakness as well as a strength."

"If you don't know how to use it properly, yes. Just as a gun can hurt you rather than help you, if you don't know what you're doing with it. Or any tool, really." Kiritsugu glanced meaningfully back at Irisviel, but she had assumed a pensive air as she continued to watch him.

Then she said: "Well, I think, in that case, you ought to tell me what makes a life worth appreciating as much as why having that life torn apart ought to evoke anger."

For the first time since entering the library that day, Kiritsugu was genuinely taken aback, even more so than when Irisviel had smiled for him when she told him her name. "What're you—?"

"The more I reflect," Irisviel cut across him, "the more I realize that you might be teaching me all of this…backwards."

"Backwards?"

"Should you not start with what I must value in life first? Only then can I learn how to be angry in the name of it when it's threatened. Is that not so?"

Kiritsugu stared at her as her words took effect. And he had to concede that she was…actually right. The only problem was…he couldn't remember the last time he'd been nothing but purely happy. Well, perhaps his last night with Natalia, but even then—

Still—

"Fine."

Kiritsugu tossed aside the fire poker and at long last took a seat in the chair opposite Irisviel's. He faced her almost challengingly, but at the same time he sifted through distant and long-buried memories in order to dredge up some piece of happiness that might still be inside him that he could share with her so she would understand what it meant to value such things.

Initially, it wasn't easy—it even hurt a little just to remember that he once used to_ be_ that happy, but nothing he had seen since losing Natalia would suffice. He would have to expose parts of his soul he didn't like to expose to anyone, not even to Maiya.

But if that's what it took, he would grit his teeth and bear breaking the rule he had set for himself earlier.

"I'll have to retrace my steps a bit," he declared after some time, during which Irisviel was completely patient in waiting for him to speak. "Perhaps I'll just start from the beginning. I was born in a country called Japan. My mother died shortly after I was born, so I only have memories traveling the world with my father." He ticked these facts off as easily as if they were from someone else's life. "But for the times we passed through the it…I do remember the place…fondly."

"Japan is…a good place to live?" Irisviel ventured to ask.

"For some. I mean, when I remember it…I think of…starry nights eating watermelon, and catching fireflies that looked like stars rising out of the grass, and the cicadas buzzing in summer, and the smell of the _sakura_ trees—I mean the cherry blossom trees—when the wind's blowing through them, and…looking up and seeing a full moon dominating the sky in silver brilliance…." Kiritsugu caught himself, realizing he was wandering into an enchantment created by his own memories. He cleared his throat. "Is there anything I've said that you don't understand so far? Any words you don't know?"

"Well…what's watermelon?"

Kiritsugu told her, and he noticed that as he did so an odd expression overcame her features, like his description of watermelon actually delighted her, despite the fact that since she was a homunculus, she really had no interest in or requirement for food. At the same time, Kiritsugu's lips involuntarily twitched.

"A country that has something like that to eat," Irisviel mused. "It sounds like magic. A different kind I mean, nothing like magecraft. Just…magic. Could you perhaps…tell me more about Japan?"

Kiritsugu sat back in his chair, actually relaxing for the first time perhaps since he'd arrived at the Einzberns' castle. "I'll tell you more of what I remember. Since you're so interested."

And so he did. And as it happened, he had a lot more to say—all of it good—than he originally thought he would.


	4. Chapter Three - Emotive Evolution

**Chapter Three**

**Emotive Evolution**

Two weeks after Kiritsugu had arrived at the Einzbern castle, Maiya Hisau joined him there for a short reconnoiter. At the moment, the plan was for Maiya to act as caretaker for Kiritsugu's life as an assassin beyond the Einzbern castle, while he remained here in preparation for the Grail War. Though his years of travel had made him restless as far as remaining in one place was concerned, and it didn't help that the Einzberns had a strange curiosity about him (despite his affinity for technology that traditional mages so abhorred) such that at times he had the suspicion that they were clandestinely observing him.

"Actually, it's kind of a godsend that the idea to educate the homunculus struck me," Kiritsugu half-joked as he and Maiya traded intelligence in the office he'd had the Einzberns set up for his personal use, the only room in the castle that contained anything "modern", including Kiritsugu's laptop and printer, and—of all things—a phone with a working landline.

"Why do you say that?" Maiya asked in her usual tone of one who asks questions mostly out of trying to maintain the appearance of being human, or in order to function better as Kiritsugu's assistant. It was the tone she adopted regularly, most of the time, anyway. Like her short, dark hair and pressed black clothes that resembled military uniform even after being out of official service for years, Maiya Hisau was very cut-and-dry.

"I think I'd have gone bored out of my mind otherwise," Kiritsugu admitted. He pulled up a report on his laptop and printed out a copy for Maiya. "There's only so much I can do here to actually prepare. The busiest it'll get won't be until the last month or so before the Fourth Grail War commences. Well, aside from some preliminary recon work I ought to carry out in Fuyuki, but I'll have to get permission from Acht." He scoffed. "Effectively, I'm something of a prisoner here, only allowed to go as far as that village I told you about for cigarettes, but they don't even have the brand I like, so…." He tore off the length of paper that printed out and handed it to Maiya.

As Maiya took it, their hands brushed each other, and Maiya started. "Is that it?" she asked in a rare moment of genuine interest.

She was referring to the cross-shaped set of three Command Seals that had appeared on Kiritsugu's right hand about a week after he came to the Einzberns' castle.

It took a second for Kiritsugu to realize that's what Maiya was referring to though, and he looked at his hand and was almost surprised to see the Seals there: somehow he'd managed to forget for a while that he even had them there.

But how could that be? This concerned the greatest and most important battle of his life to come, how could he he have so easily let something like this slip from his mind, even for a moment?

"Did you forget so easily?" Maiya asked, as usual able to read him quite clearly—one of the reasons the two of them worked so well together as a team. Her tone had a rare note of teasing that bordered on something slightly more malicious.

Kiritsugu raised his eyebrows at her and lowered his hand, clicking his mouse again to open up a series of satellite images. "As I said, this endeavor teaching Irisviel's keeping me busier than I would've been otherwise."

"Is it a question of modifying her for what you require of her when it comes to the War?"

"More or less."

"I see. In what way?"

Kiritsugu's mouth twitched as it usually did when he was truly amused. Never anything like a full-fledged smile, not in years, but it was a flicker of the flame of humanity still left inside him. "Nor am I. But the flaw—for me, in any case—was the fact that she was given an instinct to survive but no tools at her disposal that she could use to effectively do so. Well, she _has_ the tools, but there's no true drive behind her actions in defending herself. I can't be out there fighting and at the same time worrying about her. I have to know that she won't make an idiotic survival decision based on theoretical battle logic. Survival isn't based on anything out of a textbook: it's in the blood and guts." He shook his head at this basic principle missed by the Einzberns.

"Ah," said Maiya, understanding, and left it at that.

But something more nibbled at Kiritsugu's mind. "I will say though…her ability to process new information…it's really quite incredible. The more I tell her about the world, the more she thirsts for knowledge. It's only been two weeks, but she's already learned everything about Japan that I can tell her strictly from my memory, and now I've got her reading collections of Japanese ghost stories. And she's actually trying her hand at calligraphy with _hiragana_ characters. At this rate, she'll be unrecognizable as the homunculus I first met. It's already happening right before my eyes."

It took him a moment to realize that Maiya was regarding him strangely, and Kiritsugu found himself oddly agitated. Frowning at this, he printed off the series of satellite images for Maiya's use in her upcoming assignment.

As he did so, he did think more about what he was just saying, wondering if, after all, there really was a point in educating Irisviel so much, which prompted him to ask Maiya how it was that she managed to keep her sanity in battle when she functioned entirely like a machine—in a sense she was Irisviel's polar opposite, with their only common ground being that they were both rather machine-like in nature, but even then, for different reasons.

Naturally, Maiya was confused, since Kiritsugu knew the answer to that question better than most, having done precisely the same thing for as long as she could remember. But Irisviel had said herself that she was stronger than he was, and perhaps, in the end, she was right.

Because giving her the same reasons to fight that he had was—

But then, maybe—

Maiya listed off the pros and cons of humans and machines respectively in terms of their usefulness in battle, and now she could see what Kiritsugu was really struggling with. Still, Kiritsugu found himself lost in a territory of thought he did not like to be lost in:

Doubt.

The best clarity Maiya could offer was pointing out that, from the sound of things, he was given the wrong tool for the job in this homunculus, and had to recreate that tool as such so that he could use it the way he needed to.

When he could only respond with a heavy sigh of vexation, Maiya reached over and touched his hand again—a different kind of touch from the one when their hands accidentally brushed against each other.

Kiritsugu looked round at Maiya, experimenting for a moment with examining her as something more than his assistant and comrade-in-arms whom he would occasionally sleep with when the mood struck. To her credit, she handled things with him in bed as well as she handled guns, but he simply couldn't summon anything romantic towards her. At least that wasn't what came organically. He valued her certainly as an assistant he could depend on, and in an effort to alleviate some of the pain of what she had gone through as a child soldier, he had tried to offer her the same little kindnesses that Natalia Kiminski had offered him, but Maiya was just so cold, so much…like him.

Still, Kiritsugu had his needs, as any man did. As any woman like Maiya did.

And usually, in moments like these, he'd have heeded Maiya's suggestion, and in this particular room, would've taken her on the sofa set perpendicular to the desk.

But somehow, this time, he couldn't muster any kind of strictly physical desire for Maiya.

He turned away from her touch. "No. Not here."

"Very well." Maiya withdrew her hand, and though she said nothing more on the matter, Kiritsugu could tell she was confused.

_That makes two of us_, Kiritsugu thought.

* * *

><p>Initially, the steps Kiritsugu had taken down the hall to the library to give Irisviel more lessons on the modern world had been as mechanical as anything else he did. But after the conversation he had with Maiya, he became more aware of himself beyond the presence of mind required to survive on a battlefield. Shortly after seeing Maiya off as she returned to the outside world to complete the assignment Kiritsugu had tasked her, Kiritsugu made his way down the now-familiar hallway to the library with something new injected in the rhythm of his step, while tearing open the package he'd received that morning with a small amount of what could only be described as…fervor.<p>

When he opened the door to the library, he found practically the entire room wallpapered with sheets and sheets of large white paper, on which Irisviel had painted a myriad of_ hiragana _characters with her careful and precise hands. Though of course, being that she, unlike Kiritsugu, a native Japanese, had no true concept of how the actual language worked, the vision of all of these characters was something like a sudden cacophony of gibberish. At the same time though, it was far too hilarious to be ignored, even by one such as Kiritsugu.

Before he knew it, the snort of a chuckle escaped him.

Irisviel, who was at an easel working on another set of characters with her paint and brush, turned and gave Kiritsugu the particular smile she had taken to wearing in his presence. A smile that was something of an evolution unto itself, having started out as a timid trial in expressing happiness, and now to one that grew brighter and truer with each passing day, yet somehow never lost the core of its original sincerity of one who really felt happy before she knew how to properly express it completely.

"Kiritsugu, I—" Then she frowned when Kiritsugu snorted again, this time in an effort to suppress yet another chuckle. "What's that sound you're making?"

Kiritsugu stopped at once, though he didn't lose the usual twitch at his mouth. "Well…I just…ah…was admiring your brushwork. It's gotten good."

"Thank you," said Irisviel, but then Kiristugu couldn't help another chuckle.

_What the hell's wrong with me? _he wondered as he discarded the wrapping on the package he'd opened.

"There's that sound again." Irisviel set aside her brush and rinsed her paint-stained hands off in a washbowl.

Really, was there a reason to avoid telling her that he was laughing at how ridiculous the room seemed to him with all these random _hiragana _characters floating around? It wasn't as though she would be offended, if she didn't understand what it might mean to have someone laugh around something she'd worked so hard on. True, he wasn't at all insulting her, but neither did she know enough of the human experience to take it that way either. Surely, there was no harm in explaining himself?

"It's called…well, it wasn't really a sound I meant to make, but it's what's called laughter. I'm not very good at it though."

"Oh. Is it some kind of skill?"

"Not at all, no," Kiritsugu answered in a tone that was far warmer and more natural than any he'd used with Irisviel thus far. And again, he was acutely aware of it.

Irisviel finished drying off her hands on a white towel. "What is it then?"

"It's a sound you make when you're amused," Kiritsugu explained as he took his usual seat on the right-hand side of the fireplace.

"Amused like happy?" Irisviel took her usual seat opposite his.

"A special kind of happy. It's where you're so happy that it has to escape, or else you feel as though you'll burst." Kiritsugu's mouth twitched wider.

"And it escapes through this laughter?" Irisviel asked with such seriousness that Kiritsugu wanted to chuckle again.

_Wanted _to this time.

"Yes, but as I said, I'm not very good at it."

"Because you haven't been able to reach that level of happiness?"

"No. Certainly not spontaneous enough either."

"Spontaneous?"

"Sudden."

"Ah."

Irisviel's smile came back, and as with each time, this one was truer than the last by just a little. In fact, this one had an effect on her ivory face that was nothing short of lovely, and softened her crimson eyes nicely.

When she directly asked him another question, he had to ask her to repeat herself, as for a moment his thoughts had lingered on that new look in her smile.

"What is it you have there?" Irisviel asked again.

"Oh, ah, it's one of those magazines you asked me about." Kiritsugu held it out for her.

Irisviel sucked in her breath in excitement and clapped her hands. Then she covered her mouth and hunched over, looking shocked. "What did I just do?"

"You got excited, that's what happened," Kiritsugu told her, barely able to contain any of his amusement this time. Before he could stop it, he chuckled again.

"Oh, good, that's all." Irisviel shook her head and made a kind nervous, "heh, heh," that sounded like an attempt at laughter. "Now I'm feeling what you mean by happiness that's trying to escape. How was that for a laugh?"

"Not bad," said Kiritsugu, all the while thinking, _Now she's starting to cultivate reactions and responses all on her own…without any prompting or explanation from me beforehand. _He couldn't help being intrigued by this new development.

Irisviel took the magazine from him and flicked through it, reading off the title on the cover. "World Cars'."

Kiritsugu watched her as she scanned the colorful pages featuring all cars of all shapes and sizes with her crimson eyes. As she looked these things over, it was clear that happiness was filling her to the brim—beyond anything he would've thought possible a few weeks ago—as again she tried her hand at laughing—no, it was spontaneous laughter, and truer for it, like her smile was becoming. The little laughs frothed out of her in peals of giggles, and Kiritsugu mused that if such clear sounds of joy as she was making now were to be turned into colors, they would be the glassy iridescence of soap bubbles.

And he began to think that if he had to stay here, watching her like this, for an indefinite period of time, it might not be so bad after all.

* * *

><p>Irisviel had wanted to learn about cars since Kiritsugu had touched on the subject in telling her about Japan, Japan being one of the countries on the forefront of car production in the world. From there he moved on to other countries known for making quality cars, like Italy and even her home country of Germany.<p>

From there, things snowballed. Or maybe they already had the moment Kiritsugu started telling her about Japan. From calligraphy to cars to an abundance of other things, it seemed that there was no end to how much Irisviel wanted to know, and whatever she asked of Kiritsugu, he did his best to bring in what he could in light of Irisviel's confinement to the castle.

But then he began to wonder if he wasn't actively participating in it more than he first thought. As he became more and more aware of himself as a person rather than as a machine for battle, he noticed that he would pause every now and then to play with ideas on what he thought Irisviel might like to know next. These resulted in the form of a long parade of photos, more magazines, and books, as well as a string of movies, for which Kiritsugu had to have a TV and VCR installed in the library.

The Einzberns observed all of this activity coolly and with indifference, save for Acht who was actually interested in hearing reports from Kiritsugu on Irisviel's progression. Kiritsugu indulged the man, though he couldn't help being annoyed as Acht was only asking as a scholar, not as someone who would ever view Irisviel as a being that embodied the emotions and knowledge she was acquiring.

Considering how much ground they'd covered, Kiritsugu could hardly believe it when it hit him that a few months had passed by now since his arrival at the Einzberns, since his decision to start teaching Irisviel these things in the first place. On that very same day, it so happened that Irisviel had a request for him.

"Do you think it might be possible…for me to…learn how to—what was the term? Oh yes: learn how to drive one of these?" Irisviel took out the magazine on "World Cars" she still had and pointed to the page she had opened with her thumb.

It was a silver Mercedes-Benz 300SL.

Kiristsugu took the magazine from her and examined the car in question. "You like this one in particular?"

Irisviel nodded. "Mm-hm. After all I've read about them, there seems to be this split between old and new cars, but this one seems like a blend of the two. I like that."

Kiritsugu didn't even need to give the price tag a second look. The real issue was whether the Einzberns would allow a whole car to be brought in on the castle grounds. A TV and VCR was one thing, but a car….

_Ah, damn them and their opinions_, Kiritsugu thought, and his mouth twitched again, though, like Irisviel's smile, he too was undergoing an evolution as far as such things were concerned. Now his mouth didn't so much twitch as it did actually spread its wings more like a bird into something closer to a genuine smile.

When he told Irisviel, "Alright, I think I can manage to get one of these for you," Irisviel gave a gasp of excitement as she was wont to do and clapped her hands, giggling, unabashedly now.

Kiritsugu's new smile widened.

* * *

><p>The day the Merceds-Benz 300SL arrived, Irisviel was bouncing on the balls of her feet like a small child. Her steps bounced too alongside Kiritsugu's natural stride as the two of them went outside to where the car was parked on the snowy front lawn, wrapped up in their coats and Irisviel wearing her favorite fur hat.<p>

Suffice to say, if Kiritsugu had tried to teach Irisviel how to drive months previously, he would've blown a short fuse and stormed off, cold in his frustration. Today however was another day where, for the most part, he pretty much forgot about the Command Seals stamped on his hand.

Thankfully they weren't on any real roads, but when it came time for Irisviel to take the wheel after Kiritsugu demonstrated the basics for her, she seemed more excited about turns than anything else, which resulted in a lot of spinning and skidding about across the icy lawn. In one instance they were hurtling towards the trees, the car sliding entirely sideways and off-course, and Kiristsugu, heart pounding as it hadn't pounded in a long time, gripped the inside of the car, his fingernails digging into the interior fabric.

"IRISVIEL, THE BRAKE! THE BRAKE!" he bellowed.

"Oh! Right!" squeaked Irisviel, and slammed her foot down on the brake, her fists clenching the steering wheel in a stationary position.

The car swung to a stop just short of its back end ramming into the trunk of the nearest walnut.

In the quiet aftermath of sheer relief, the two of them both simply sat there for a moment, breathing as though they'd been running. Then they looked at each other, and Irisviel full-on snorted out a laugh, covering her mouth when the rest of the laughter came tumbling out against her will. Now she knew the contexts of laughing at and laughing with someone, and the misinterpretations that could result therein.

"What?" Kiritsugu gasped.

"Your face," Irisviel sniggered from behind those graceful fingers lined up so perfectly beneath her grinning red eyes.

Kiritsugu glanced at the rearview mirror and immediately saw Irisviel's point. This time the smile came automatically, and at the same time he gave a short "Ha!", which culminated in the opening of a floodgate of further laughs, one after the other, until….

It was a happy catharsis. A cascade of laughter—_his_ laughter—filled the car, loud and true, to the point that he couldn't find it in himself to stop even when he laughed harder to the point that he had tears in his eyes.

Feeling those tears, he wiped them away without giving them a second thought. What was more, he could hear Irisviel laughing too, laughing _with_ him, and looking at her, looking at her look at him, and he started laughing again.

The two of them laughed so hard it seemed that they might never be able to stop, because even when Kiritsugu suggested they ended that day's lesson and return to the castle, he and she could barely hold a proper conversation for how much they kept on laughing.

The cold in the air and the darkening sky though saw to it that laughing wholeheartedly became difficult, and now it was all they could do to think of going back to the warmth of the castle.

Though Kiritsugu usually walked fast out of habit, this time he felt it in himself to slow his pace down. For a little while, he let Irisviel take the lead, and watched her from behind. While the cold did a put a stopper to the laughter, the whole way, Kiritsugu certainly was in no mind to stop grinning.


	5. Chapter Four - A Choice Meant for Humans

**Chapter Four**

**A Choice Meant for Humans**

On top of everything else Irisviel absorbed in her learning, she was also quite keen on games that tested one's wits, a trait which Kiritsugu shared with her. So he introduced her to chess, a game that he and Natalia used to play. That and he thought it was a good way to sharpen Irisviel's ability to make strategic decisions for the upcoming Grail War. Truth be told, he found himself more interested in developing this kind of strength in her than he was before, since before he hadn't counted much on his ever thinking he might need her input on anything battle-related. Now however, he'd begun to see there was far more worth buried within that mind of hers than he'd originally thought, but he kept this observation to himself.

At this point, Kiritsugu was hardly surprised at how quickly Irisviel grasped and mastered the game of chess, but he was no less pleased as he watched her do it. She got a look on her face when she was thinking of her next move that made him realize how she herself was at once so wise in some ways, thanks to the cells of Justeaze von Einzbern from which she was created, and yet at the same time so much a child. He had to admit that he was rather drawn to the effect.

"What?" Irisviel said after a minute, looking up from the chess board in the middle of their most recent game one afternoon.

It was then Kiritsugu realized he'd been watching her with an unconsciously large grin on his face. For the first time in a long time, he felt a rush of color to his cheeks and he coughed decisively into his hand, trying to hide it now that he was conscious of it.

But Irisviel didn't miss it. "Your cheeks went very red. Is that that 'blushing' you mentioned sometime ago?"

"I—well, yes…." Kiritsugu gave up coughing into his hand and instead ran it through his hair in an unrepressed vent of suddenly tangled up emotions.

Irisviel blinked and then let out such a burst of laughter as Kiritsugu hadn't yet heard from her that it was actually quite jarring for him.

"I've never _seen _you so red," she positively gushed. "It's…what's that word again? Oh…yes…. Cute." She gave him—of all things—a teasing wink to emphasize her point.

At this, Kiritsugu went from agitated to relieved, letting out a shaky chuckle, again unable to help his amusement. "I think you're the first person to ever say that about me." _Even Shirley never thought that, I don't think, even if she did only just think of me as her little brother. _Then Kiritsugu wondered why he was even drawing that comparison.

Irisviel was still smiling at him, but it was more of a studying kind of expression, like she was toying with an idea. Kiritsugu found he very much wanted to know what that might be. But he also found himself discomfited again against his will and averted his gaze.

"It's still you turn," he mumbled, clearing his throat.

"Ah, have I disturbed you?" Irisviel asked, raising a fine and impressive silver eyebrow.

Kiritsugu made a show of tracing a line of grain in the wood of the table with his index finger. "It's very…disarming," he admitted, in spite of himself. "It actually makes me…uncomfortable."

"'Disarming'?"

"Yes…it's…never mind."

"Kiritsugu?"

At once Irisviel sounded quite concerned, and Kiritsugu regretted a little that he allowed himself to grow so gruff toward her when she'd really done nothing wrong. Inexplicably vexed despite his efforts to control himself, he rose from his chair and moved to the window.

"I do apologize…for disarming you, as you said…" Irisviel began carefully.

"No…it's not something…." Kiritsugu pinched the bridge of his nose as he fidgeted with his lighter in his pocket.

And then it all quite suddenly became very hilarious to him, and like the day Irisviel nearly crashed the car and then laughed at the expression on his face, he couldn't help another burst of his own laughter as before.

"Kiritsugu?" Irisviel was understandably confused now.

But Kiritsugu shook his head and turned to her, his grin returning, no longer faltering. "I don't understand myself. I suppose it comes from the fact that…much like you once were…I did my best to be nothing more than an empty shell that acted purely on instinct."

Irisviel, relaxing in the face of his sincere amusement, went back to teasing him. "I see…. Well, that seems a bit contradictory, considering how much you were going on about how ineffective that kind of thinking was."

"Ah, indeed. I suppose even for as many years I've lived and for all the things I've seen, I'm still such an idiot about some things."

"Am I allowed to agree with such an observation?"

"Only if you really do."

Irisviel giggled again. "Then I do. Compared to people like Grandpapa and those others of my Einzbern kin with whom I've spoken, you're very different. I'd say that compared to them, you probably _are _an idiot about some things. But I must say that at the same time, that makes you a far more interesting person than they are."

"Oh?" It was Kiritsugu's turn to raise an eyebrow.

"Oh, yes." Irisviel placed her fingertip on the head of one of her white pawns on the chessboard and rotated it playfully, and her smile returned with a very musing attitude to it. "They're all very straightforward, and despite my limited experience with humans, after meeting you, I think you paint a far better picture of what humans are really like than _they_ do, even though in biology you are all fundamentally the same."

"Well…I've always thought mages were a bit odd that way," Kiritsugu confessed. "The traditional ones, in any case."

Irisviel turned her smile on him, and it was very lovely, and Kiritsugu realized that it was because it was one born of very true enjoyment with her current situation.

"I'm really glad we can speak like this, you know," she told him. "It makes me happy. I like that."

"I feel the same way," Kiritsugu responded in kind, openly acknowledging the sentiment without a trace of wavering.

Perhaps he had worried and labored emotionally over nothing, but for the time being, Kiritsugu knew for a fact that he had never been more eager than he was now to resume playing a simple game of chess.

* * *

><p>The following day, Kiritsugu was coming back inside the castle after his usual morning smoke, when his keen ears picked up the echoes of what sounded like a struggle in a hallway off the entrance hall.<p>

He followed the sound to its source and found the young and golden grandson of Jubstacheit, Malte von Einzbern preying on Irisviel in the corner. And though she was cornered, Kiritsugu took in enough of the situation to note that Irisviel's fists were clenched, as though she had the will to fight, but some outside force was preventing her from doing so.

"Come now, that's not how a good homunculus acts," Malte taunted. "Tsk, tsk for attempting to use alchemy against me." He wagged a finger at her. "You're nothing more than a puppet for the Grail War. Otherwise you do nothing but collect dust. I'd prefer to make some kind of use out of you. You do, after all, resemble a very beautiful woman." He attempted to lean in.

Irisviel withdrew as far as she could, and though it was established that Malte was the one preventing her from using magic since she had clearly attempted to use it on him before, that didn't stop her from displaying a venomous glare and cracking the back of her hand across Malte's face.

This sent him staggering back, clutching his reddened cheek and choking on rage. "Little bitch."

Though he attempted to lunge after the ducking Irisviel, Kiritsugu had already strode across the room, fully immersed in machine mode, and struck Malte from behind, precisely at the temple, sending him falling unconscious to the floor before he even knew what hit him. Only as he coldly regarded the sight of Malte supine but breathing on the floor did Kiritsugu mildly consider the consequences of attacking Jubstacheit von Einzbern's beloved grandson.

"K-Kiritsugu." Irisviel's voice was very small.

Kiritsugu looked at her, and for a moment he fully felt like his old mechanical self. Irisviel shrunk back, only a little, but he imagined it was at the vacant nature his dark gaze usually possessed. True, she had seen them before, but that was before he'd taught her about emotions. Back then it hadn't mattered, but now….

"You moved…without the slightest hesitation," Irisviel finally said, trying very hard not to sound intimidated. Actually she might've been a little bit in awe at the same time.

"Of course I did. Were it not for Acht, I'd have just killed him."

Irisviel shrank a little more.

Kiritsugu closed his eyes and breathed a moment, and felt everything flooding back, all the new things that—

Now he realized it: it was Irisviel who was changing him, making him feel things again, just as he was making her feel things for the first time.

_Was this…how Natalia felt…when she was raising me…not even realizing she was lowering her guard until…? _

When he opened his eyes again, he said, with an effort to sound gentler, more human, "Perhaps that's going a bit far, even for me. Still, he had no right to try and touch you that way." He pinched the bridge of his nose and regarded Malte's prone form again. "I suppose I'd better come up with some excuse…."

"Kiritsugu," Irisviel said, trying to sound bolder, something that Kiritsugu couldn't help warming to.

"Yes, Irisviel?"

"Could you…teach me something like that? Like how to knock someone out like that?"

Kiritsugu admittedly hadn't expected her to ask this.

Irisviel pressed on at the clearly baffled expression on his face. "I can perform alchemy well enough, but…if I'm to…. I mean wouldn't it be prudent to give me as many weapons as possible?"

"Ah…." Kiritsugu recalled something of his own words when he'd first met Irisviel. He imagined her porcelain hands making a fist and striking another's jaw, her ivory skin painted with another's blood.

She did have a point though. It was the point he himself had made. And he shouldn't deny her this opportunity.

He inclined his head. "Very well. I'll teach you what I can." He picked Malte up and threw him over his shoulder fireman style.

Behind him, he heard Irisviel say, very softly, as though what she was saying was rather sacred: "Kiritsugu…thank you."

Kiritsugu replied without turning, though he couldn't help a small smile touching his lips. "You're welcome…Irisviel."

That night, the image of Irisviel fixing Malte with such vengeful anger on behalf of defending the honor that frankly was due her regardless of her being a homunculus would follow him into his dark dreams.

* * *

><p>After that, Kiritsugu moved his lessons with Irisviel to include some basic self-defense. They cleared a space in the library by moving the furniture around, and Irisviel was given a set of yoga pants and a grey t-shirt to replace her usual white and gold dress, which would be entirely impractical for this exercise.<p>

Though he warned her that he wouldn't hold back, he certainly had no desire to put a scratch on her. Fortunately, Irisviel had taken the things Kiritsugu had taught her thus far truly to heart. This was almost a test of that, and she passed with flying colors, hardening her resolve and not afraid to put as much effort as she needed to hold her own against him in a fight sequence.

The important thing was getting the pattern of movement down. The application of force would ultimately be necessary too, but that had to come naturally, be an afterthought almost. At this point though, Kiritsugu had far more confidence in her than he would have had a few months ago.

In fact, Irisviel had been of great assistance in dealing with the whole Malte fiasco as far as Acht was concerned. She wasn't able to take responsibility for knocking him out, but she worded the situation such that in Acht's eyes, it would appear that Malte had tried to do her a harm that would ruin her ability to perform her duty as the Grail Vessel, which was the only thing Acht and the other Einzberns really cared for from her. Still, she had observed enough about Malte's character to make her story believable. True, if he had gotten what he'd wanted from her, in all likelihood, she still would have been able to function as the Grail (psychological scars wouldn't have entered into the issue), so she had to make it so that his intentions for her would destroy everything the Einzberns had worked so hard for, leaving Kiritsugu no choice but to strike him down.

For his part, Malte grew jumpy around Kiritsugu whenever the two happened to cross paths, which was usually only around mealtimes, and even then, Kiritsugu preferred the kitchen to the grand dining room anyway. Eventually though, Malte made the awkward announcement that he was going to travel abroad for a while to "get away" and was gone the following day.

As for Irisviel and her progress with both her education and her skills in self-defense, Kiritsugu was more than satisfied with her handling of the task, especially on the day when she managed to knock him flat with a well-aimed strike where she connected her foot with the inside of his leg, hitting just the right nerve to make his knees buckle.

As he looked up at her flushed and beaming face full of unmistakable pride, he began to think that his work in recreating her to better suit his needs in the Grail War was more than complete. At the same time though, it was the first time he really began to think about what was going to happen to this woman in the end, and his own pride in his formidable teaching skills suddenly crumbled from underneath him. The same pressure in his chest that had emerged when he'd rescued Irisviel from the snow emerged once again.

He looked away from her.

"Kiritsugu…what's the matter?" Irisviel asked him as she caught her breath, shoving her silver hair out of her crimson eyes.

Kiritsugu stood. "It's nothing," he lied. "Well done," he added, forcing himself to look at her and give her the smile she deserved.

"Well, I did say I was stronger than you, so it was only a matter of time," Irisviel teased, and she did a kind of aimless twirl, her hands clasped behind her back as she reveled in her own sense of being pleased with herself.

"Maybe we should leave it here for today though," Kiritsugu suggested, making a show of rubbing the spot where Irisviel had struck him earlier on the jaw.

"Okay," said Irisviel, perfectly at ease. "Maybe we could take a break then from the self-defense and move onto—No wait, don't tell me. I…want it to be a surprise this time," and she giggled that giggle of hers.

Beyond the disturbance of his thoughts, there was something else he couldn't seem to shake even long after he'd left the library, and that was a particular scent lingering in his nose, the scent of irises, if he wasn't mistaken.

Irisviel's scent.

* * *

><p>Kiritsugu thought long and hard about it, tossing and turning that night, staring up at the void that was the dark ceiling. Strangely enough however, when morning came and he ventured a look at himself in the mirror, he didn't think he appeared nearly as bad as he thought he would. Actually, he looked like he got a much better night's sleep than he did.<p>

Today though, he was particularly anxious about seeing Irisviel, mostly because something new was driving him today, something entirely against how he would have normally thought about things. He pushed away everything Acht might say to him were he to know Kiritsugu's intentions, and acted entirely on that same impulse that had driven him on that cold day he rescued Irisviel from the cruel mercy of the snow and the starving wolves.

Irisviel, as usual, was ecstatic to know what he had planned for her today, and, steeling himself, Kiritsugu tried to get a reading on what she alone felt inside herself, without the influence of what the Einzberns had always told her about her destiny—what she would desire now that she'd gained something of a free will.

"Did you want to know even more…about the world?" he asked her as she expressed her continual amazement with it.

"Oh yes, but you needn't worry about my forgetting my main purpose for the Grail," she added, losing none of the fervor in her tone. "I know what I have to ultimately do, and no matter what, I will carry that out. If anything, for your sake."

Kiritsugu frowned at her from where he was leaning over the back of his usual chair by the fire. "What do you mean, 'my sake'?"

Irisviel ceased fidgeting with her hands in her lap as she sat in her own chair. She fixed Kiritsugu with a strangely heartfelt expression. "Well…there's something about you that seems sad sometimes, even when you're trying so eagerly to teach me how to be happy at the exact same time. I thought maybe…you had your own reasons for wanting to win the Grail…and I'd like to think that if you _did _win it, you mightn't be so sad anymore."

Kiritsugu lowered his eyes to the carpet. The words she had spoken had spelled out for him quite clearly what he must ask her next. He had no more qualms on this matter. "If you wanted to…you could simply deny fate…and walk away."

Irisviel blinked at him. "Eh?"

"The world can be truly yours," Kiritsugu plowed on, his dark eyes still shadowed. "I want to give that to you, for real. All you have to do…is leave this place. Leave this place and never look back. I would do that for you."

"But what about the Grail—?"

"The Einzberns can make a new vessel," Kiritsugu cut in with unintentional urgency, raising his eyes from the floor to address Irisviel directly, intently. "It doesn't have to be you, necessarily. You—" He grew restless suddenly and stalked away from the chair, striding about the room like a caged panther. "Now that you've moved beyond a mere sense of self, now that you have a true idea of what you'd give up if you continued down this path…surely you have the right to choose. Trying to create a tool with a sense of self was Acht's fatal mistake: the two concepts are incompatible."

"Ah…." Irisviel folded her arms and regarded Kiritsugu with an expression that was more adult and serious than anything he'd seen on her face before.

Kiritsugu quit his pacing, stopping at the mullioned, frosted window. He leaned his palms against the sill, as if he suddenly needed a prop again to keep himself standing. For some reason he was shaking a little. "Ask yourself, Irisviel: will dying for the sake of the Grail War—never mind my sake—truly justify the bloodshed that must come with it?"

"Do you believe that I should leave everything behind then?"

"If you wish for it. Think of nothing else but what you want."

He felt Irisviel rise from her chair and draw close to him, but he didn't turn around. Something in him made him afraid to turn around, this man who'd felt nothing like fear in years after a string of struggles on the hell of the battlefield.

Then Irisviel said: "I think I'm beginning to see why it is you decided to educate me. Is it because you…felt the need to bequeath to me all the joys of life that you have abandoned in your own pursuit of a higher purpose?"

Though she could not have been more incorrect, Kiritsugu did see why she might observe something like that. And he didn't wonder if, thinking back on the last few months, that mightn't have eventually entered into it, even if it wasn't there originally.

His silence though prompted her to suppose that she was in fact incorrect in her thinking and quickly reevaluated.

"No…that isn't it. If that were the reason, I don't suppose you would be presenting me with this unexpected proposal. Perhaps you are bequeathing me a choice in my fate…because _you_ had none?"

Kiritsugu opened his mouth to speak, facing Irisviel at last, yet he couldn't seem to find anything to say. He felt somewhat uncharacteristically diminished, like a tree that's having its bark peeled away and can only stand there in martyrized patience.

What had happened to his usual instincts to strike back at anyone who tried such things?

Irisviel went on, and she pointed out the fact that while he was human, he'd trained himself instead to behave like a machine, all the while giving a choice meant for humans to her, she who was nothing more than a doll, a puppet. Even as Kiritsugu went back to his original explanation, that it was necessary for him to modify her behavior for his needs on the battlefield, there was the tiniest fraction of something ringing false with his words. Not entirely, for it still wasn't entirely untrue, but it was enough falsity that he noticed.

Regardless, he asked Irisviel not to get any strange ideas, because that appeared to be exactly where she was heading. Though he couldn't help commenting on how eloquent she'd grown in the last few months since emerging from the cultivating tank, when she was able to express in words her understanding of how eliciting anger, happiness, and pride in herself would be her ultimate driving force in surviving possible combat. In a way, this whole conversation was like a final exam for her.

Actually, she took that beyond what he had expected, when she went on to say that she had made an original observation from all of the books she'd read, the stories she'd listened to him tell, the movies and photos and pictures she'd seen: that anger wasn't so much a source as it was a branch off a deeper impulse underneath.

"That impulse," Irisviel declared, "is love."

Kiritsugu stared at Irisviel as her words hit him, and suddenly he couldn't seem to breathe, utterly confused at where all of this was coming from where Irisviel was concerned, and feeling as though he'd just been sucker punched. He was so stunned that he found himself unable to speak. He could only stand there as Irisviel eagerly explained herself.

"In all I've seen and read in the learning materials you've given me, where there have been acts of anger, I have noted acts of love behind them: ordinary people willing to kill to defend their families, or their country, a mother protecting her children to the death, soldiers spilling blood to avenge their fallen comrades without a moment's hesitation—acting much as you did when Malte was harassing me. So I gather I must learn about love, for that is what gives anger its greatest power, yes?"

Kiritsugu's heart began to pound insistently, and at first he assumed it was the strange fear he was experiencing. But there emerged that aching pressure in his chest again, which made it, if possible, even more difficult to catch his breath, despite the fact that he was standing quite still.

And yet…and yet….

To hear such words coming out of Irisviel's mouth, it was positively insane. At the same time though, when she said them, and he looked at her, regarded that face, he knew then that he thought it was beautiful, that he liked to look at it, to look at her, that he had grown not simply used to being in her presence, but enjoyed it. Truly enjoyed, without letting anything distort it.

Meanwhile, Irisviel seemed to be pouring out her very essence, positively thrilled at the idea that she could take something so powerful as love and experience it to a level beyond herself, to carry it to other people. She was absolutely beaming, her face grown suddenly as flushed as it was after their last combat session the day before.

"In fact…Kiritsugu Emiya…I find you very interesting. You're the first person I've spoken to…about whom I've wished to know more, just in how you carry yourself, how you speak, what you say and what you _don't _say, even when your eyes—"

"Irisviel, what're you getting at?"

Kiritsugu had the sensation of alarm bells going off inside him.

"If I am to gain the most of what I will need to fight, and to win," Irisviel reasoned, "I wonder…would it be appropriate for me…to love you?"

"Don't—don't joke about stuff like that!" Kiritsugu snapped in a sudden panic, flinging out an arm and stepping back as Irisviel drew close. Much too close.

Irisviel stopped, blinking at him in sincere bemusement. "I'm only trying to better understand what I must do in order to achieve what you ask of me. I can be at my strongest…if I have someone like you to fight for." She attempted to close the gap between them again, despite Kiritsugu's being pressed against the wall. "I think you're the kind of person…I would want to fight for. Isn't that enough?"

Kiritsugu heaved a frustrated sigh, and at last forced himself to face Irisviel head on. He wouldn't run, but he wasn't going to let her be fooled by all that she'd read in the books he'd given her, for while they gave love a poetic character, they were nothing more than postures, even the most realistic portrayals. Real life would always be realer than anything else.

"It isn't that simple," he said, trying not to sound tired. "Damn it," he muttered under his breath, and, with an attempt at his usual stoicism, he folded his arms with the intent of reestablishing his authority as a teacher, fixing her again with eyes that were cold. "I suppose we'll move on to the subject of love, if that's what you want. And you'll see how wrong you are about it."

Irisviel though could be nothing but overjoyed at the prospect.

For Kiritsugu's part, for the first time in a long time since starting to teach Irisviel about the world, he was glad to escape to the solace of his own chambers soon after that whole blunder.

"What the hell is she thinking?" he growled to himself.

Meanwhile his heart thumped wildly in his chest to the point that again he found it somewhat difficult to breathe. He shoved his dark hair out of his eyes, trembling as he leaned over the writing desk by the window and tried to master himself.

And now that he was alone with his thoughts, all that had just occurred between him and Irisviel began to really sink in. He began to have second thoughts about his decision to teach her more in depth about love.

In truth, what did he himself really know about it? He'd felt it, yes, but much of his experience with it had been so twisted by pain and loss, most of which had been like repeatedly plunging a sword into his chest, as much of all that had been his own doing, his hand forced by the ideals he desired so desperately to reach.

In many ways, he was really better off not loving at all, which suited him fine where people like Maiya were concerned, people who could behave just as mechanically.

But Irisviel—

And then there was Natalia. And his father. And Shirley.

Perhaps he was a fool to think he could live so easily without love, despite its risks. Perhaps it was because of these risks that he couldn't help but love when he found it inside himself. Even with Maiya—

But again, Irisviel—

Kiritsugu gave another sigh of frustration and quitted his rooms in search of a breath of fresh air outside. Having left all his weaponry in the care of Maiya, and having run out of his cigarettes with no hope of replenishing his favored brand, he resorted to venting an enormous, crushing wave of frustration he hadn't experience in a very long time on an unassuming walnut, kicking and punching it with such an unleashing of blind fury that for a few moments that made up his entire being.

But his brain caught up with his heart and he remembered himself. He leaned against the marred tree as he caught his breath, the act itself somehow calming in its own way.

And then his usually sharp senses alerted him to the fact that he was being watched. He looked up, finding Irisviel standing at her window, watching him as she had that day months ago in the aftermath of the snowstorm he had rescued her from.

Unlike then however, now, looking at her, his heart started thudding, and that pressure in his chest returned, but this time it took on a new form: an ache that was tender, like a sweet pain that quickened his pulse, sparking the dormant flow of his blood to life.

Was it because of what she just said, were her words affecting his thinking?

No.

He knew then that this was something that had already been growing inside him, that for a while he'd been rather smitten with Irisviel von Einzbern.

Indeed, she was a beautiful doll, but the spirit she had developed was thanks to him. Some of her beauty was his doing, and suffice to say, it amazed him to find such things were still within him alive and well.

So Irisviel watched him, and Kiritsugu watched her. Only the threat of catching his death of cold forced Kiritsugu to turn away at last and make his way back into the castle.


	6. Chapter Five - Frost Melt

**Chapter Five**

**Frost Melt**

The following day ought to have been awkward, but something had passed between him and Irisviel when the two of them had watched each other the previous evening. When Kiritsugu arrived in the library after breakfast, Irisviel greeted him easily with her smile, so Kiritsugu managed one too.

And things went on as if nothing had happened. Kiritsugu couldn't help the flutter of his heartbeat and the rush of warmth to his cheeks at the sight of her so bright and eager, but he tried not to let it scare him, for he realized that was part of the problem. Irisviel was evoking these feelings in him, and he knew them for what they were—how could he not, after Shirley? Still, it had been so long, and he had managed his life from a mechanical standpoint without such things that he couldn't help being afraid of them when they came creeping back.

At the same time though, there was the feeling of a light floating inside him too when he saw how happy Irisviel was being with him. He wanted so desperately to hang onto that feeling. It felt so damn good, after harboring a heart that, as hard as he'd worked to keep it strong in its stoic isolation, could not fully escape the dark pain of loneliness.

As far as teaching Irisviel about love, he took a different approach than he did before, and allowed her to pick and choose the materials they would use. This led to Irisviel delving into more on the literature of love, devouring volumes filled with love poems from all over the world. For his part, Kiritsugu provided her with the concept that different countries had different views on love, just as individual people did.

"In Japan, for example, love is perceived as a divine feeling, and sacred in that way," he told her. "To say, 'I love you' to someone isn't something that's thrown around lightly. Actually, there are several different ways to express that feeling depending on the…intensity of it."

"Ah…." Irisviel traced a shape with her finger in the book of Japanese love poetry she was reading, and Kiritsugu recognized the pattern as that one of the new _kanji _characters he had recently taught her. "Then maybe we should pick up where we left off in teaching me how to speak Japanese."

Kiritsugu couldn't help a small laugh. Even after the time he'd spent amongst the Einzberns, he still wasn't too keen on getting his mouth around the harshness of the German language. "Very well then." He considered her for a moment, reading the enthusiasm in her lovely crimson eyes. "In addition, we ought to discuss the universal language of emotions as well."

Irisviel frowned. "Emotions have a language too?"

"Yes, they do. It's not something you think about until after the fact though, since emotions physically expressed are unconscious. Which is why I haven't really said anything about it I suppose." Kiritsugu laughed again. "You know this's been nearly as new for me as it is for you."

"That _is _true." Irisviel's grin came back with that teasing air that was particular to her.

And when Kiritsugu returned her grin, he found he was all the more pleasantly surprised to see the color rise in her cheeks and the way she impulsively averted her gaze.

"Is this what you were talking about? Unconsciously, physically expressed emotions?"

"Yes."

When Irisviel ventured to look up at Kiritsugu, the two of them simply watched each other.

And then Kiritsugu very quietly said, "Exactly."

So while the discussion began with language, the subject of _emotional _language shifted organically towards the concept of dreams.

Irisviel admitted that she never had any, and Kiritsugu likewise admitted that he used to have them (omitting the detail of the recurring nightmare he used to have about the day Alimango Island burned) but didn't have them so much anymore, save for the occasional vague sense of someone speaking to him while he was asleep, but nothing more vivid than that.

In the middle of their discussion, one of the Einzbern maids made an unorthodox interruption to let Kiritsugu know that he was receiving a "message on his telephone", at which Kiritsugu rolled his eyes at the Einzberns' ineptitude with and disdain for technology. Excusing himself, he left the library for his office and looked up the log in the phone and discovered that it was Maiya who'd been trying to reach him. He returned her call at once, and while it wasn't unimportant, it was no less routine as far as conducting his preparatory work for the Grail War. It was enough that he could leave it in Maiya's capable hands and was able to push it to the back of his mind when he hung up, realizing that the call itself had taken up a full two hours.

He returned to the library quite contrite that he had been away for so long, but it turned out that Irisviel had found a way to constructively occupy her time quite easily. She'd settled herself in her usual chair by the fire, resuming the spot she had last read in the book of Japanese love poetry. But then the warmth of the room and the doldrum feeling unique to quiet, sunny afternoons combined with the soft, fuzzy words in the book had lulled her into what appeared to be a very peaceful slumber.

Despite Kiritsugu's feeling guilty about having left her waiting for him, he was struck by the look of her sleeping. He'd never actually seen her sleep before, aside from when he first saw her in the cultivation tank, and at the time there had been nothing very human about her except in her outward appearance. She had a soft smile on her face, and she seemed so content down to the very gentle sound of her breathing that Kiritsugu had no desire to disturb her and couldn't help perching himself on the arm of his own chair and simply watching her. And he was glad he didn't wake her, because she stirred on her own shortly after he came back.

She blinked open her lovely eyes and her smile widened when she saw him, and the sight of seeing her wake enthralled him quite as much as the moment she first opened her eyes for him surrounded by that amniotic fluid, if not more so. And then the color rose in her cheeks like it did earlier and she sat up straighter, brushing strands of white hair out of her face.

"I'm sorry…I didn't mean to fall asleep…."

"No, it's my fault, I didn't plan on being gone quite so long. That was Maiya on the phone."

"Oh…." Irisviel paused to let out a wide yawn and then said, still a little sleepy, "Well, I can't quite remember where we were last…." And then her expression brightened, became more wakeful. "But I think I had my first…what you call a…a dream!"

Kiritsugu raised his eyebrows. "Did you?"

"I saw things…in my head…they were vague but…I was happy…it was snowing…and I heard…your voice…you kept telling me…I would be all right…."

"Ah…."

Kiritsugu quickly put together that Irisviel had had a dream comprised of what her brain remembered from the day he'd saved her from the snowstorm. But he said nothing of what he'd guessed to Irisviel. There was something sweetly childlike in the way she perceived it all as something that may or may not have actually happened. In any case, he knew she was smart enough that she would figure it out for herself on her own. For now, he wanted nothing more than this moment, sitting with her while she beamed with utter excitement at having had a dream of her own.

And then she said, "I don't think I would've ever had such a thing…if you hadn't been teaching me all these things…." She laughed, closing the book of Japanese poetry and handing it to Kiritsugu.

"I think I'd like to try my hand at writing this down, in my own words," she told him. "But I don't want you to read it. I'm going to burn it as soon as I write it down. I just…want to see the words for myself…."

Kiritsugu took the book from her. "Very well. As you wish."

So he watched her as she wrote this dream out for herself, and it was enough for him that he could watch everything that crossed her face as she did so, and then when she tossed it into the fire and the two of them watched it burn up, there was no need for either of them to speak. It was something set between them that couldn't be expressed in words, but something in the way Irisviel watched it burn told Kiritsugu that in writing the dream out, she had indeed figured out that it had been manifested from her memory of him saving her.

He could only guess though how that made her feel, and he supposed he might never know, that this would always be a secret that she would keep for herself.

* * *

><p>Being that the Bounded Field the Einzberns used around their castle and forest kept the place sealed in a perpetual winter, there was no such thing as a truly "warm" day, but there were days the sun's warmth would break through the cold shell and touch the ice and snow with its gentle touch.<p>

On one such day, the way the sunlight glistened on the hanging icicles and the snow outside like diamonds, Kiritsugu was so struck by the beauty of it that he was inspired to invite Irisviel to walk outside with him. The delivery though was less than desirable though as tar as gentility was concerned.

"Why don't we do away with structure? I want you…to come outside with me." As soon as he said this he massaged the back of his neck and avoided looking at Irisviel directly.

"Just go outside?" Irisviel asked.

"Yes." Kiritsugu cleared his throat, lowering his hand to dip it into his pocket and fiddle with his lighter, which saw little use since he'd run out of cigarettes. "I'm sorry," he added. "I'm more used to simply giving out orders, rather than…making a…casual suggestion. Let me rephrase that, shall I? I would…like you…to come outside with me…if you please."

_It still sounds like an order._ Kiritsugu mentally kicked himself.

"Okay, but what did you have in mind to do?" Irisviel asked, already pulling the rope to summon a maid. "You weren't thinking of…smoking one of those…?"

"Cigarettes? No. I've run out. And anyway…they bother you, don't they?"

Kiritsugu had lit one once during one of their lessons. He had been particularly frustrated that day—he had still been somewhat vexed by Irisviel's general nature then—and Irisviel had asked to try one too, for the "experience". She had half-choked on it while the smoke itself bothered her eyes, at which point Kiritsugu had snatched the cigarette from her and snuffed it out, growling that he'd put his out too and never smoke around her again. That was when he went back to strictly smoking outside, until he ran out of his cigarettes of course and quickly discovered that Germany couldn't provide him with anything that could compare with his preferred brand.

"But you like to smoke one when you're frustrated, don't you?" Irisviel asked as the maid came in with their coats and Irisviel's hat.

"I'm _not_ frustrated though," Kiritsugu told her truthfully. "And even if I were…I respect the fact that they bother you, and wouldn't be so discourteous as to forget about that."

Irisviel considered his words a moment as she pulled on her coat, and then her smile returned, as though she'd become satisfied with something. And rather than be vexed by this new habit she had developed of keeping secrets, Kiritsugu was intrigued by it, curious to know what went on in that head of hers. But at the same time, considering his own habit of keeping things hidden in his soul, he was happy enough with the curiosity itself.

Outside, the two of them walked beside each other with no specific destination in mind.

"The point is to free things up," Kiritsugu explained. "We can just…talk to each other about anything that crosses our minds."

"I see," said Irisviel. "Though what I don't see is what this has to do with love."

"Well love is something you can't force to be because you decide it should be there." Kiristugu shook his head as the two of them made their way, side by side, into the Einzbern forest. "It simply happens."

"How do you know then, whether it's there or not?"

"Often you don't. Or maybe you do. With everyone it's a little different. See why I told you that it wasn't that simple?"

"Then why is it…I wanted to know so badly if I could love you? If I should?" Irisviel fiddled with the buttons on her coat. "Is there something underneath that that I'm not seeing?"

"Maybe. I have…the same feeling myself."

Irisviel looked up at him, eyes widening. "You do?"

"Well, yes," Kiritsugu admitted, slightly taken aback.

And then he wondered….

But before he could act on what felt like an oncoming revelation, Irisviel stopped, having spotted something in one of the trees that fascinated her immediately.

"Look, Kiritsugu! It's a bird's nest! I'd love to see if there're chicks inside, just like in those nature books…."

The enchanted Irisviel nimbly scaled the trunk of the tree (it wasn't very tall) and retrieved the nest before Kiritsugu could say a word for or against it, but her face fell oddly blank as she stepped back down from the tree, cupping the nest in her palms.

Kiritsugu peeked over her shoulder and saw what was wrong: the baby robins in the nest were nothing more than little huddled dead husks. Maybe the cold had been too harsh, the parents having for some reason abandoned the nest.

"They're dead," he explained to Irisviel.

Irisviel looked at him again, her crimson eyes shining. "Dead?"

At first Kiritsugu wondered at her confusion, and then he realized that it wasn't so much that she was confused—she knew perfectly well what "dead" meant, but she had never seen it before, never held it in her hands. He, who had held more death in his hands than he cared to remember, forgot what that kind of innocence was like.

Irisviel's crimson eyes shined brighter as they filled with tears. She regarded the dead birds again. "I…don't…why are my eyes filling with…water…?"

But Kiritsugu knew she knew, and that's why she sank slowly to her knees, clutching the nest of death to her heart as she wept like a child over it.

Kiritsugu's heart throbbed in his chest as it brimmed again with that pressure and ache. He didn't know what to do. He'd been alone for so long that crying held no purpose for him anymore, since there hadn't been anyone there to hold him together.

Yet he very vividly recalled that shattering moment after he shot down Natalia's plane, how he'd fallen to his knees and roared at the indifferent heavens, tears streaming down his face, how he'd crumpled beneath the crushing weight of his pain, the strength sucked from him and leaving him crawling on the deck of the rental boat, his heart begging, desperately wishing more than it had his whole life that there could have been another way, couldn't there_ please_ have been another way?

"Iri," he whispered without thinking, his spirit reaching out to her as everything came together in his mind.

In her sorrow, Irisviel didn't hear the unintentional sobriquet, but that didn't matter: what mattered was that Kiritsugu now knew what to do, and that's why he'd addressed her as he did. She was small and fragile like those birds right now, small, like the little name, "Iri". And he would cradle her in his hands as gently as she cradled that nest as he recalled for himself again that feeling of helplessness when all hope seemed gone because he had created his own solitude.

He slid to the ground beside Irisviel, and very gently and easily put his arms around her and pressed her close against him.

Irisviel gasped at the suddenness with which he took hold of her like this. "Kiritsugu, what're you—?"

Maybe she thought he was going to try and do to her what Malte had tried.

"It's okay," Kiritsugu assured her at once, resting his chin on top of her soft, silver-haired head. "This is all I can to help you right now."

Irisviel shivered, but after a moment she buried her face in his coat and wept as she hadn't before. Kiritsugu held her tighter, but still with that same fierce gentleness. For a second, he almost succumbed to crumbling too, in face of Irisviel's innocent despair. But he forced himself not to. It wasn't like before though, when he'd simply push the feelings away: instead it was more like they made him stronger.

Was it because, in this moment, he was being fulfilled by watching over someone like Irisviel in this way? He felt almost clean, for while his despair was tainted with the blood that dripped from his hands, Irisviel's current despair was pure and full of light. Yet, as he might've normally done, he did not feel unworthy to touch it in this way.

By now, Irisviel's tears had soaked through his coat, but that just added to the feeling of being cleansed somehow. When at last she raised her head to meet his gaze, she wiped at her eyes with the back of her free hand and gave a watery laugh. "I'm sorry. Was it silly of me to react this way over something like this? Something just tells me that I am."

Kiritsugu offered her a gentle smile—the gentlest he'd offered her yet. "It's fine. Everyone reacts to these things differently."

The two of them were silent for a spell. Irisviel looked about, as if reawakening to the world, and Kiritsugu watched her attentively. Then Irisviel heaved a sigh and at last laid the nest aside at the base of the tree, and after a second's thought, buried the nest underneath some snow, and reverently so.

"Okay, I'm ready."

"Okay."

Kiritsugu helped Irisviel to her feet.

As the two of them walked on, Irisviel did look back at the tree. Sensing she still needed something of a lifeline, Kiritsugu reached out and took her gloved hand in his.

Irisviel gasped as he gave her hand a small squeeze, and when she gave him a questioning expression, he explained that this kind of thing came with love's territory.

"The question is whether you mind if I do it," he told her seriously. "Whether you like it."

"Ummm…." Irisviel gave it a moment's pensive thought before she responded—not in words though: instead she affirmed that she didn't mind his holding her hand by gently squeezing his hand back.

For the present, there was nothing more need be said. All felt curiously right with the world for once, and Kiritsugu looked straight on at the path up ahead, as did Irisviel, and Kiritsugu had the sense of the two of them beginning a strange kind of new journey together, into the unknown.

* * *

><p>Despite her cry, Irisviel was still a bit melancholy about finding the dead baby robins. Though Kiritsugu wished that something like that was the only sum of his own troubles, he felt no less pity for Irisviel. In fact, he felt more, because of what he had suffered, and also because it was her.<p>

He wasn't exactly the expert however on boosting people's spirits. So he was at a loss as far as cheering her up was concerned. Certainly he could show more of what was beautiful in this world, but Irisviel couldn't seem to get the birds off of her mind.

In Kiritsugu's experience, activity had always served to help him sever his thoughts from his feelings, going through the motions of an action with only the ultimate goal in mind. It was the basis for why he could do what he could do.

Going outside was out of the question though, and reviewing self-defense didn't seem right either. In Irisviel's case, this had to be something that would affect her feelings, something with sensitivity. Although an alternative did present itself, he was a little wary of it, since for this he himself would need some lessons in it. That and it seemed an oddly opportunistic solution.

Still, it was the first time in a long time that he had wanted to make someone really happy just because. Not since Shirley….

Kiritsugu buried his face in his hands as he bent over the laptop at his desk in his private office, trying and failing as always to completely banish the ghosts that haunted his thoughts.

* * *

><p>The next morning after breakfast, Irisviel was waiting for him as always in the library. She was inspecting the phonograph he'd had delivered the previous evening, though not with her usual wide-eyed curiosity. It was more like she was doing it because it was normal, and she felt she ought to do it.<p>

Kiritsugu saw himself in that simple action, and for a moment he observed the scene with that same ache he had experienced when he found Irisviel wounded in the snow, for he realized now that at the time he had been unable to recognize that telltale pressure in his chest as an instinctive reaction of pity.

Then he took a deep breath and cleared his throat, trying again to give Irisviel the smile she needed. "I see you've stumbled upon the basis for today's lesson." He closed the door to the library behind him.

Irisviel looked up, her crimson eyes maintaining that new shaded appearance they'd had since finding those dead birds. "Oh?"

Kiritsugu showed her what was tucked under his arm: a vinyl record, something very different from the CDs he'd been bringing in. He explained to Irisviel what it was.

"It's older than the CD, or it's an older version of what the CD was," he said as he slid the record out of its slipcover. "And while it's more fragile, and more easily destroyed like those cassette tapes I showed you, and the CD has a longer life than both of them, there's something…warmer about the sound of music on a vinyl record. I've found anyway. There was an army captain in Sierra Leone who had a phonograph like this, and he played records like this on it at night. The sound was divine. It was the first thing I heard when I first went to him to offer his platoon my services as a mercenary."

Kiritsugu lifted the needle and placed it on the spinning record at the point he wished the music to start playing, and the warm note at the beginning of a waltz smooth as water came warbling out of the funnel-shaped speaker. That was all it took to catch a hold of Irisviel's saddened heart and tug it back towards the light. Kiritsugu saw it in the change in her eyes, like the clouds lifting to reveal the sunlight hiding behind.

"It's lovely," Irisviel whispered, and without instruction began nodding her head in time to the music.

"But wait, there's more." Kiritsugu took hold of Irisviel's soft, warm, ivory hand and pulled her towards him.

"Oh, you dance to it," Irisviel realized, but then she grew confused when Kiritsugu took her other hand and draped it over his shoulder, pulling her even closer to him—close enough that he caught her iris scent.

She had already learned about dancing, though Kiritsugu hadn't particularly participated, so the music was mostly fare that could lend itself to solo dancing instead. This was wholly different.

For his part, Kiritsugu managed to maintain his usual confidence, as with anything, as he began to lead them both in a casual box-step to the rhythm of the music. At first, the unknowing Irisviel dragged and tripped over her feet a little, but she caught on quickly, as Kiritsugu could have only expected of her at this point.

Even so, her smile, the smile that he liked so much to see, slowly came back, illuminating her face.

"I feel like I'm floating, or flying," Irisviel sighed, and something in her voice caused a thrill inside Kiritsugu.

It wove a kind of spell around him, and he too felt like he was floating or flying, right up there with Irisviel. And aside from their self-defense work, this was the first time the two of them had physically been this close.

Kiritsugu found his heart beating faster to the music, and Irisviel seemed under a spell as well, her bright red eyes like gems as she looked up at him. That illusion of the ropes of Time unraveling overcame them both it seemed, yet at the same time wrapped around them as if attempting to bind them. Yet for all the danger signs this presented to someone like Kiritsugu, he couldn't seem to break away.

Leastways, not until the music stopped and the elaborate spell broke.

Kiritsugu and Irisviel stopped too, and for one still second the two of them simply stayed that way, arms around each other, looking into each other's eyes, hearing nothing but the sound of each other's breathing.

Then Irisviel bit her lip, acting oddly nervous. "Kiritsugu…can you tell me…is this more about love that you're teaching me?"

Kiritsugu swallowed. "I'm not…all that…sure…" he answered reflexively. Desperately he shook his head and stepped away from her, his hands falling away from her touch. "I…only wanted you…to stop being so sad…over the birds…."

Irisviel blinked at him, clasping her hands together. "I see." She seemed to consult the carpet before pressing on: "In a lot of the stories I read and movies we watched, I remember in romantic ones, there were moments when the two lovers would dance, and then…." She took a deep breath as though mastering herself before bringing up something bold. "Something called a—a kiss?"

Kiritsugu sucked in his breath, his entire body tense. He took another step back. He felt about to be cornered again, like on the day when Irisviel first brought up the subject of love.

"No," he said at once. "I can't teach you that."

"Why not?"

"Because something like that…it has to mean something. Anything else—it's the kiss that has to mean something. Otherwise…."

Indeed, when he and Maiya had slept together, they had done everything—except kiss. To him, a kiss was something sacred in sealing two hearts together, perhaps because it was an act particular to human beings. Having sex was common in a myriad of creatures, humans being no exception, but kissing—

But then Kiritsugu looked at Irisviel, and realized that he wanted very much to—

"Does it have to mean that we love each other?" Irisviel questioned.

Kiritsugu sighed. "Yes. You see, there's lust, and then there's love. Lust is merely the desire to touch another, regardless of whether there are feelings behind it. But love…well, you see now, don't you?" He smiled at her, though it wasn't a happy one.

"I think I do." Irisviel dared to take a step toward him, but stopped after that, holding her clasped hands to her heart as though she were offering a prayer. "You see, that day when we found the dead birds, well…I wasn't sad after that just because I'd found them. I had another reason. The entire time you held me while I cried, at the same time my heart beat like never before, like it wanted to burst out of me, like it was reaching for something beyond myself. Reaching for…you." She paused only a moment before continuing. "It wasn't entirely unpleasant, but when you were no longer there, when you had to leave as usual, I wanted that moment back and…I wanted nothing more than to give this beating heart of mine to you, so you could hold it, and…and…."

And suddenly Irisviel broke into a laugh that was clearly out of a fracturing of nerves. "Listen to me ramble…I think I've been watching too many of those movies again…." She withdrew into herself further, clasping her hands tighter. "And my palms are all clammy…."

"Are you saying…you have a desire…to give your heart to me? Fully?" Kiritsugu asked quietly, feeling the rise again of the shadow of his darkness that always followed him wherever he went.

"It was just an idea before, but now…." Irisviel took another deep breath and seemed to harden suddenly in her resolve, her eyes brightening into something brave. "I really feel it!" she exclaimed with fervor that Kiritsugu couldn't ignore.

In fact he admired the passion in it.

There was only one problem.

"I knew this was a mistake," Kiritsugu muttered, shaking his head in regret. "You've acquired too much in what I've taught you."

"And I treasure that," Irisviel insisted. "That's why I want to give you my heart, because you've turned something artificial that only resembled life into something truly alive! It means everything to me now that I know what I know. If I give you my heart, I know that you would take care of it, and I would want nothing more than yours in return, because I want to do the same for you!"

Kiritsugu felt some of the frost return to him, the emptiness. His defense against all that could destroy him as an assassin. "No, Irisviel. I have no heart to give you."

Irisviel was the one to shake her head this time. "That can't be though, Kiritsugu. How could you have given me all of these wonderful things if you were truly that way?"

Even as he'd quickly reconstructed it, the crystals of frost were already breaking under the weight of that gaze. Because unfortunately for Kiritsugu, Irisviel had a point. He was being forced to come to terms with that.

Still, he couldn't trust himself to speak.

So Irisviel spoke for him. "You said the kiss is something that has to have meaning behind it? It can't be simple lust."

"Yes." Kiritsugu could only seem to talk like he was hissing out air, his chest tightening.

"Then how shall we know if it means something unless we try it first?"

"Fine. I suppose you make a good argument."

He was determined to further convince Irisviel that for all their lessons on love, loving him was still out of the question—for if she did, it would be the ruin of him. He took hold of Irisviel by the shoulders, but he found it difficult to be as rough with her as he might've been able to be months ago.

Still, he had to try. He fixed her with a hard look, his eyes sharp. She had to be made to understand, she had to be made to see—

He came down on her lips with more of the intention that he was going to bite her, like the strike of a cold snake, and crushed her against him, digging his nails into her, causing her to give a muffled little yelp of pain.

But then—

Her iris scent and her softness filled him before he could block it, the feel of her lips against his like a drink from the Holy Grail itself, and everything in him relaxed at once, became instantly tender and melted at the touch of her warmth. So what if she wasn't born, but made by the hands of a mage instead? She felt so real, so wonderful.

He turned gentle, and she tentatively opened for him like a flower when she began to see the truth in his heart through the warmth that he now gave to her.

She slid her arms around him as he slid his around her, and he lifted her closer against him, pressed her close until he could feel her heart beating against his. And he drank from her more deeply, and she responded in kind. The depth and fierceness with which she responded to his own moved him beyond words.

And he would've gone on this way if he hadn't needed to come up for air. He pulled away, but reluctantly so, dropping a few small kisses at the corners of her mouth, on her cheeks, to her neck, unable to stop until he reached her shoulder, where he had to stop if only because he suddenly felt drained of strength. Shaking and breathing hard as though he'd been running, he buried his face in her hair, eyes wide in a mixture of fear and ecstasy, surrounded by that scent of irises, like he was in a field of them.

Irisviel too was shaking and catching her breath, her eyes just as wide. It was all either of them could do, to simply hold each other this way, unable to speak in the shattering conclusion that came crashing down on them both.

And then, at a point that felt like the other side of a vast universe, a place that was quiet and peaceful and where only the two of them existed, Irisviel whispered, "Kiritsugu?"

"Yes?" Kiritsugu whispered back, licking his suddenly dry lips.

"What does this mean?"

"You already know. And…so do I."

"Yes. You're right."

Another pause.

And then Irisviel asked, "Can we—can we stay this way? Just for a little while?"

Kiritsugu smiled against her skin, a true smile that reflected all the joy that shined in him now like a polished gem. "Of course we can." He reached up and ran his fingers through her silver hair of moonlight. "I love you…Iri."

Irisviel gave a sigh that was like the wind in the blooming cherry blossom trees. "Kiritsugu…I love you too."


	7. Chapter Six - Small Hope

**Chapter Six**

**Small Hope**

After a time holding each other, Kiritsugu felt some of his sense return to him, and he pulled away, partly out of apprehension, and partly out of the necessity to move when he was growing so stiff. It seemed Irisviel was having the same problem, so she didn't protest when he relinquished his hold on her.

Uncertain, Kiritsugu thought it might help for them to withdraw to a smaller room. He felt quite exposed here all of a sudden. But then, maybe it was just the feelings of uncertainty. So he took Irisviel with him to his private office, and though this alleviated his growing sense of anxiety somewhat, he still couldn't help massaging the back of his neck in a nervous and reserved attitude.

"Listen…I have to admit that apart from the waltz—and even that I had to teach myself first—I don't have much to offer you in the way of…. Well. Guns are…pretty much all I really know." He avoided looking at her and instead looked out of the window at the crystallized world outside.

"That's okay," said Irisviel candidly, in the middle of exercising her vivacious curiosity in examining all the modern trappings added to the room, but being careful not to touch any of them out of respect. "I really have nothing to compare this too, except those books and movies and songs. And you've said those aren't like real life anyway, yes? Well, I wouldn't want anything fake from you. I don't _believe_ I would, in any case."

Kiritsugu turned from the window and stared at her, momentarily forgetting his discomfiture. Irisviel had her hands clasped behind her back now, and was beaming at him as though simply looking at him was enough to fulfill her every happiness.

"It's your_ thoughts _that intrigue me," she told him. "And the face that I see that hides them, and the way I can sometimes see them shining from your dark eyes. And since we're being honest with each other, I may as well admit that this wasn't a passing fancy. I'd been observing it for a while, though I will say how I reacted to all of it changed as you taught me more about the world and began to illicit true feelings in me."

"What do you mean?" asked Kiritsugu.

"It began, I think…when you first spoke to me of anger, when I woke from my ordeal in the wilderness, and you explained how you rescued me from that—for which, I now realize, I never really properly thanked you."

"At this point I think it's implied you're grateful."

"Hmmm. Well, anyway, when you spoke to me of anger, when you yourself expressed a glimpse of it when I clearly demonstrated that I couldn't feel such things at the time, something of the passion in your voice somehow reached me, even if at the time I didn't really understand it, as you saw. But it triggered a whisper of desire…to learn from you about what true strength was, about what anger and happiness were. Thinking back on it now, I realize that at the time there was this…change in you, I think, that played a part in the passion of your anger reaching me so. At our first meeting, you were as much of a machine as I was, to put it simply, and you had no expression, no life in your eyes, save for something that was as much an imitation as my entire body is."

"Iri—"

"You see? I find I like that."

Kiritsugu blinked. "Like 'what'?"

"The change in your face when you call me that. It's a shortening of my name, yes? You call that a 'nickname', or 'pet name'? As for someone who is special to you?"

"For now I wouldn't dispute that."

Irisviel giggled. "And something about it lights me up inside. It's the only way I can think to describe it, that it fills me with light."

"The way my face changes, you mean?"

"Mm-hm. One moment it's very cold and empty, but when the warmth appears, when you smile—smile truly—when you reveal a piece of tenderness that you'd been hiding inside you—like when you call me 'Iri'—something like magic happens, and again, not simply magecraft, but something beyond that. Something quite beautiful."

Irisviel crossed the gap between them, and much in her childlike way, she hesitated before she reached up and took Kiritsugu's face in her hands. She was drawing from what she had seen and read, but the impulse behind it was all her own, and sincere. She did this because she truly found the look of his face to be something worth looking at.

"As I said, you're the first person I've really wanted to know everything about. And I do. I want to know everything. If you're willing to tell me."

Kiritsugu smiled, enveloped again in the warmth of her touch, of her smile and her beauty, her softness. He felt like he'd crawled on his hands and knees to get to this lovely point, and he wanted so much to stay here for as long as he could, and be happy like he used to be.

"All right then, if you want to know everything…I feel as though, you're the only person I can tell everything to. And in the first place, you should know that that's a big deal for me."

Irisviel giggled again, and Kiritsugu managed a chuckle, slipping his arms around her and pulling her close against him, her head tucked under his chin.

Though his hands were stained with the blood of many, for some reason, happenstance had gifted him this angel, and all at once his calculating brain was filled once more with nothing but thoughts of holding her like this, and how light and pure that made him feel for the first time in years.

* * *

><p>As the world shined in white crystal out of the window, the two of them, settled on the sofa, hands clasping each other, spoke of many things.<p>

It began with the first time Kiritsugu had tried a cigarette, how effortlessly he had taken to the habit of inhaling smoke and drawing upon the effects of nicotine to his brain (Irisviel still made a delightfully disgusted grimace), when most people would choke on their first try. Then Irisviel recounted what she recalled from the day she was born, how Acht had given her a tour of the family workshop and what her views on it were now that she had developed a sense of self. The way the two of them drifted in an out of each other's memories flowed easily like a river.

Until Irisviel asked him if he'd been in love before.

And though the answer led to a very dark place in his heart, Kiritsugu felt no need to resist the truth with Irisviel, and he clung to that fact, that uplifting fact that here he was, in the presence of a person to whom he could show all the scars of his past without shame somehow. Perhaps because of her innocent ignorance of what the world was really like, for there was only so much he could inform her of it in teaching her.

"Her name was Shirley," he said very quietly. "A childhood friend."

"Oh? And what happened?"

"She died."

There was a moment of held breath before Irisviel said with sincere gravity, "I'm sorry."

"Yes well…you see…my father…was researching Dead Apostles—you know about those—and Shirley was his assistant. She really admired him, and frankly, so did I. When she used my father's magic on herself to try and prove his theories on turning humans immortal in order to reach that damned Root, she herself became a Dead Apostle."

"Oh no.…"

"You've only heard accounts and stories and case studies, but that can't compare to actually seeing it. No less when it's happened to someone you love." Before Kiritsugu knew what was happening, he was already reverting back to his machine instincts, blocking off the emotions from the words he was speaking. "Shirley was half-transformed when I found her, surprisingly resilient enough to maintain a human mind long enough to beg me to kill her before she harmed anyone. But I didn't have it in me to kill her, and for that the entire island of Alimango became infected, save for me and my father, and the Mages' Association was forced to step in and raze the whole place to the ground, destroying the entire village. My father…did that. And I knew he would keep on doing that…unless he was stopped. But there was only one way that could happen. So I killed him."

"You killed your…father?"

"Yes."

Despite never having had anything like parents, Irisviel, having done all her reading on parent-child relationships, took this very much to heart, which was only surprising to Kiritsugu at this point because of her lack of practical experience, and had nothing to do with her ability to absorb and apply information. Even then, maybe knowing that he still shouldn't have been surprised, but there it was.

So Kiritsugu plowed onward. "But I had someone who took me in—even after killing my father, I still wasn't old enough to look after myself. Her name was Natalia Kaminski, an assassin who'd been sent with the Mages' Association to deal with the incident on Alimango. She taught me everything I know about my work as an assassin, and she…was like a mother to me."

"A mother…." Irisviel spoke the word with very thoughtful reverence.

"Yes. I know that for all we've discussed on the subject of mothers and fathers, I've been remiss in speaking much of my own, biological or otherwise."

"Is that because such things cause you pain?"

Kiritsugu could only shrug. As Irisviel made a noncommittal noise of pensiveness, he went on.

"As an assassin, I had hoped to achieve what I'd hoped to achieve in killing my father…saving as many lives as I could."

"So…you don't kill for things like money, or other reasons you say other people kill. You kill…to save lives?"

"That's right. I sacrifice the few to save the many."

"To what end, then? To save the entire world?"

"As humanly possible. But…there came a point…where that wasn't enough. Not for me."

"Why? What happened?"

Fully drawn into his story, Irisviel nestled into Kiritsugu, and in contrast to the coldness with which he looked back on his life, he offered her his warmth and automatically slid one arm around her, holding her against him.

"On Natalia's last mission, she was asked to kill a mage who was turning people into ghouls with his bee familiars. On the plane on which she killed him, the bees escaped anyway, and she was the only one on it who wasn't stung or bitten and subsequently turned into a ghoul. Still, if she had landed the plane, there was so much risk that an outbreak like the one on Alimango Island could be prevented or contained, if at all. The only way to minimize the damage and save the most lives possible then…was to destroy the plane in its entirety _before _it landed."

"So…you had to kill this woman then…that you say was like a mother to you?"

"I did."

Irisviel seemed to bite her tongue a moment, before asking, "But how is it you can speak of such things without…weeping?"

"I've learned to turn it off," Kiritsugu told her as if it was no big deal. "I can access these feelings whenever I wish, but for the moment I've shut down that access. Otherwise…I don't believe you could handle seeing the state I would be in. I don't want to burden you with that."

Irisviel surveyed him with what was clearly concern—she was grasping onto these emotions quickly—but she couldn't seem to find any words to say. She could only hold Kiritsugu's hand tighter.

Kiritsugu closed his eyes. "Anyway, once I have the Grail, I'll make it so the world doesn't need people like me."

"You mean you have no intention of granting Grandfather's wish?" Irisviel sounded anticipatory rather than angry.

"Not at all." Kiritsugu opened his eyes. "You're the first and only person here I'm telling this to, and to be honest, I think you're the only one who'll understand. Somehow.

"I mean to bring peace upon this Earth. End warfare, and bloodshed, and pain like that. A miracle is the only way I can save the world without resorting to the methods I must otherwise use. A miracle is the only way to eradicate such a basic human instinct as conflict. I must do it, now more than ever, or else I can never truly answer for all the blood I have spilt. Though I know the path I've walked has been a reprehensible one, I have only shouldered these dark sins because of the good that had to come of it. It was the only way, has _always_ been the only way.

"But I don't _want _it to be the only way. I must save this world from itself, it's a calling that whispered to me since I was young, and I would love nothing more than for everyone to have the happiness that I myself could never have. At this point, it's all I know to do with my life, all that keeps driving me onward.

"So I will take hell and misery and evil out of the equation with the miracle that is the Holy Grail."

"But then," Irisviel said, her voice lowered to a solemn murmur, "what would you do…after?"

This time Kiritsugu squeezed Irisviel's hand as he thought about her question. "I hadn't really given it much consideration. This is something that's consumed my entire life. I can't imagine anything else beyond this. Especially when going into a war, no matter how cunning and clever you are, Death can always come for you. Even so, if I do survive, I doubt I would live for very long afterward."

"Why is that?"

In spite of himself, Kiritsugu heaved a heavy sigh he felt the need to divest himself of. "I have this vision of myself falling in the end, making my wish and then letting the flames of the Grail War take me."

Though he could never doubt himself where all of his bloody decisions of the past were concerned, he knew that there was the possibility that even if he finished his life of bloodshed with the act of saving the world, he may still burn in whatever afterlife awaited him. The only thing that kept him from wavering on his actions was his ultimate goal.

It had to be done, no matter what. No matter who judged him for the measures he took to see it done.

"Damn them," he muttered.

"Who?" Irisviel inquired.

"The Heroic Spirits. I'll have to summon one as a Servant for this War, and the one Acht has in mind sounds like a poor choice for me. Really, if it weren't a requirement for the War, I wouldn't bother with it. I hate them. Such beings…they come from bygone ages whose codes of conduct in war have been crushed over time. The battlefield is no place of honor, any more than I'm a man of honor. But I only care about one thing in this, and that's humanity's salvation. It's…all I have left…."

He clutched Irisviel's hand tight again, before an impulse seized him in spite of himself and he leaned over and pressed his lips gently to Irisviel's ivory knuckles.

"You could have me," Irisviel whispered against his ear. "For a little while."

Kiritsugu looked up at her, and smiled at being enveloped in the sweet bliss of the scent of irises and her warmth. "For a little while, eh?"

"Mm-hm." Irisviel nodded seriously, before she rested her head on his shoulder.

And though it provided him with such solace as he hadn't known in a very long time, as Kiritsugu went on holding her, he couldn't help the uneasiness that crept back into his soul.

* * *

><p>In some ways, it seemed almost too good to be true. It certainly wasn't anything ordinary, but not since the night Kiritsugu lost Shirley and killed his father had there been much of anything that could be called ordinary in his life. Yet it seemed for Irisviel that she would follow Kiritsugu to the ends of the Earth, and Kiritsugu had to admit that if he could be with one person at the end of all things in this world he planned to destroy and recreate with his wish, he could think of no one but his sweet Iri.<p>

On warmer days, the two of them walked together outside, like they did the day they found the nest of dead birds. And Irisviel would moan that she couldn't go beyond the Einzbern forest barrier.

"I wish I could go somewhere that isn't always winter, but the other seasons too. I want to see fields of flowers. I want to the see the sea shine like glass with my own eyes!" Irisviel sighed with a mixture of contentment and longing at the thought.

At which Kiritsugu would take her gloved hand in his. "One day, maybe, I could take you to those places. We can see those flowers, and the sea…together."

Even though it was unlikely, in those moments, Kiritsugu didn't care: he wanted to promise Irisviel everything that was denied her before. He wanted that for her, and she felt that fire within him burning so brightly when he would take her in his arms and kiss her.

And though she would respond in kind, it never escaped his notice that she would give him a small smile that he quickly realized was laced with something akin to melancholy. At least, that's how it seemed.

From there the creeping uneasiness grew, until he woke one night alone in his room, covered in sweat and shaking so bad and so sick to his stomach that he had to vomit in his bathroom sink. Looking up at himself, he thought he looked weaker than he ever had in his life, and had half a mind to punch the reflection of himself in the mirror, and only stopped because he knew that would solve nothing.

"What the _hell _are you doing?" he growled under his breath, clenching and unclenching his white fist before wiping off his mouth with the back of his hand. "This has to…this has to stop. She's going to die. Because of you."

Again, he had to stop himself from punching his reflection in the mirror.

Flexing his fingers, he hardened his heart and his resolve.

"It's time to wake up," he muttered, making an effort to return to that empty man he was before he met Irisviel von Einzbern.

* * *

><p>He had everything planned out in his mind, had defenses in position for every eventuality. That was how he dealt with every aspect of his life.<p>

What _did _happen was Irisviel tried to give him a kiss when he arrived in the library that day, and at once he took her by the shoulders and pried her off of him. No more fooling around.

Though Irisviel was understandably confused at this attitude, she was very smart about it, and assumed a calculative air of her own. She stepped back accordingly and gave Kiritsugu his space, but she wasn't about to be denied an explanation.

So Kiritsugu proclaimed at once that all of this could be nothing more than a meaningless act. Having turned away from her, he leaned forward, resting his chin on his folded hands.

"This can't go on any longer. We can't keep fooling ourselves like this._ I _can't keep fooling myself like this. Irisviel, I cannot love you, and you cannot love me. I tried to tell you…."

He felt Irisviel watch him, felt her reactive rigidity in the face of his rejection. And then she said, in a very small, sad voice: "But why…Kiritsugu?"

"You know why. This can only end in tragedy, and that's not how a love should be. You will die as the vessel for the Grail, and I will be right there, causing that death. I will kill you for the sake of my ideals…as I did with my father…and Natalia…and for me to simply love you as I do when that happens is hard enough…but to have us legitimately acknowledge that love…as if we could be like any other couple…it's like the universe mocking us…." Kiritsugu shut his eyes, a surging mixture of love and anger threatening to break free despite his attempts to keep it in check. "After all the sins I've committed…I can't turn back…and you…I…how can I even think that I…could ever be worthy of your love?" The emotions rising up within him half-choked him before he could stop them, making it difficult to breathe, even as he did not speak above a hissing whisper.

"But what's wrong with loving something that will be destroyed?" Irisviel demanded, her tone shifting to something steelier.

"Because I will be the cause of that destruction, after I taught you how important it is to live," Kiritsugu growled bitterly. "There is no worse betrayal I could do you. To love you on top of that—if I could save you, that would be different, but…I can't…and all that awaits me in the wake of your destruction is my own death…if only…you didn't have to be the sacrifice…if I knew I could fight for you, and that we could live on together beyond the War…but I…."

An acutely painful sensation of grief came up like a knife blade, splicing together with the already burning blend of love and anger, roiling inside Kiritsugu even as he kept his outward appearance relatively serene. Everything was buried but raging brightly just beneath the illusively calm surface, even after as hard as he'd worked beforehand to empty himself as he used to be able to do with such ease.

The thought of exposing his heart again that way, this time knowing for a fact that he would lose this love, right from the very start, and that he would contribute to that loss, was more than he could bear, beyond any loss that had been forced upon him before by his ideals. The mere thought of it broke him more than he believed would be possible, but as he risked looking at Irisviel again, and the look on her face—a shining expression of suddenly smiling compassion he'd never yet seen there before—it rendered him almost entirely undone.

He shoved his dark hair out of his face, still finding it hard to get his breath, his whole body trembling as he felt literally torn between what he wanted to do and what he must do, and how either action evoked such keen amalgams of love, and anger, and grief.

"Listen, Kiritsugu." Irisviel ventured a step toward him.

Kiritsugu grew even more tense, though he couldn't withdraw from her closeness. Something about it calmed him, as it always did, despite everything he was feeling.

"You've told me," Irisviel began, "that you have no vision of yourself beyond the War, that once you have achieved your goal, there will be nothing left for you but to perish in your own flames. Even when you realized you loved me." She sighed. "I know…I can see that perhaps it would be cruel to you…to us both…but, I can't help loving you. I don't believe it's a gift I should deny, even if all we have are nine more years together. Don't you think so too? You understand what a gift this is? To us both?"

Kiritsugu shook his head. "We have no hope…Irisviel…no future."

"No future?"

"Nothing except your blood on my hands. No love should be so cursed. Maybe this was all a waste of time…teaching you as I did."

Irisviel grasped him by the crook of his elbow and clung tight, before he could stop her. "No! Don't say that. Everything you've taught me…I could never give any of it up. You've given me such precious things, and they are so because they are proof that there are still beautiful, wonderful things in your heart. It means all the more to me then that I can be a part of what you hope for the future of the world. And as far as _our_ future goes, we can carry that on as any other couple might do. We can create a whole new life, with a future all its own."

It took a moment for the implication of Irisviel's words to sink in, but she laid it out quite simply that it would be possible for the two of them to conceive a child that would carry within it all of Kiritsugu's hopes and prayers for the future that Irisviel no longer would be able to once she was sacrificed to the Grail. And at the same time, Irisviel believed that she might be fulfilled as a person in her own way by being given the chance to become a mother—something that was certainly never intended for a homunculus.

Kiritsugu stared at her, captivated as he always was now by that beaming expression flushed with pure excitement for the very life he had taught her to appreciate and fight for. "I'm not sure if you've thought this through," he finally managed to say, though he still didn't pull away from her warm grip on his arm. "Having a child is…."

"Actually, I _have_ given it some thought." Irisviel's smile turned curiously shrewd. "Did you really think that everything you told me hadn't crossed my mind too, even for a moment?"

"I—" Kiritsugu had no real defense here. Indeed he had underestimated her. Again. Sheepishly, he muttered, "You had this in mind from the moment I walked in this morning?"

"Yes, regardless of what you had planned to tell me." Irisviel released Kiritsugu's arm and reached up, gently coaxing his folded hands apart and taking one of them in both of hers—and again, he did not resist. "I know this will be hard…but it will be worth it too…it's what I wish, and for all that you've done for me, I want you to be happy, despite what lies ahead for us both. I want to be the one to _make_ you happy, if I can. This is my solution. I can give you a part of myself to have and to hold beyond the ashes of war, a reason to go on living. I want that so much for you."

"But…Iri…." Kiritsugu ironed his tired, shadowed face with his free hand. "Iri…why would you go so far…for me…for us…?"

"Well I _am_ stronger than you." Irisviel's crimson eyes sparkled. "I've said so before, haven't I?"

Kiritsugu couldn't help a chuckle, which came out oddly watery. He had to concede to Irisviel's argument that true strength came not from killing before being killed, but enduring despite all that crushed down on one's shoulders.

While still clutching his hand with one of hers, Irisviel reached up with her other and touched his face, and his dark eyes were fixed with her red ones. "Kiritsugu."

Kiritsugu tried one last time to turn her away, but he couldn't find the strength to anymore, not when Irisviel was looking at him like that, not when she was willing to do so much just to give him a small dream of happiness, even if that dream would be short-lived. It was clear that she was more than grateful to him for all he had done for her, and that in and of itself was enough to give him hope that maybe…just maybe…his soul was not doomed to be completely lost…that he could find salvation in a child born from their love. The very thought of it lifted his spirits more than he would have expected.

Fervently he took Irisviel's hands in his now and kissed them, his throat tight. "I think I understand you now. It seems there's nothing more I can say. As usual, you've outdone me. Ah then…we may yet reach the Grail together, even if only in spirit by the end."

"Yes." Irisviel returned his embrace as he pulled her into his arms at last.

Enveloped in her scent of irises, Kiritsugu clutched her to his beating heart quite fiercely, wishing never to let go. "Iri…please bear me a strong child," he croaked beside her ear.

"I think I can manage that," Irisviel murmured into his hair, "if you would think of a name for it?"

"I will." Kiritsugu tenderly ran his fingers through Irisviel's soft silver hair.

Irisviel sighed. "My love…."

Kiritsugu held her even tighter. "Iri…I gave you all that's best in me, all that I wish I could be as a person…I had no choice but to fall in love with you, wouldn't you say?"

"You're right," Irisviel agreed. "Because you've brought about these things in me, I've wanted nothing more than to give you a reason to live, as you've done for me. For as long as I can."

Kiritsugu's tender smile widened softly. "Yes. God…you're wonderful. Brilliant."

Irisviel fell speechless, no doubt at the burning flame of love bright in his dark eyes when he pulled away enough to meet her gaze. Then she rose up and met the kiss he offered her, both of them basking in a love almost too beautiful and too divine to look at straight on, much like the ferocious brightness of pure sunlight, and equally as warm.

For now, Kiritsugu could believe in Irisviel, as fiercely as she believed in him.


	8. Chapter Seven - Bonded

**Chapter Seven**

**Bonded**

Needless to say, the Einzberns—Acht in particular—were very much taken aback at Irisviel's informing them she and Kiritsugu had made plans to bear a child between them. Kiritsugu didn't even think it needed to be brought to their attention, but Irisviel knew better, as it soon became clear: as far as Jubstacheit went, nothing concerning his homunculi ever transpired without his knowledge, and in this case, a homunculus bearing a child was a big deal indeed.

With that said, Gretel von Einzbern, the closest thing the family had to a matriarch, was instantly of the opinion that if Acht was going to allow this, then it must be under the condition that Kiritsugu be asked to marry Irisviel. That was the "proper" thing to do. Here, it was Kiritsugu's turn to be taken aback, not because he was outright against the idea, but because he wasn't particularly_ for_ it either. But then he supposed he oughtn't have been surprised that that was the conclusion the traditionalist Einzberns would come to. In the grand scheme of things, he himself didn't consider it to be of too much importance, but then he was such a rebel of convention.

Still, it could be in his favor to be legally considered Jubstacheit's son-in-law. But what irked him about Acht ultimately agreeing to all of this was the expression he cast both Kiritsugu and Irisviel as he gave his consent when the proposal was brought before him in the Einzberns' main drawing room: it was one purely of a man who saw this all as nothing more than an opportunity to further observe his creation that was Irisviel, to see what would happen if she were to give birth to a child like a "real woman".

That, and—

"In addition, what also attracts me to this idea is the possibility it presents for a new kind of 'backup vessel', as it were."

Kiritsugu and Irisviel, already a bit thrown for a loop by the Einzberns asking for a marriage out of all of this, looked at each other, their expressions of shock reflecting the other's as if they'd both been struck dumb.

Then Irisviel squeaked: "You mean you'll—?"

"Should you happen to fail to reach the Grail, then the child you conceive can step in as the next in line to serve Irisviel's purpose in the Fifth War. Obviously this will be different to how _you_ were created, Irisviel—this homunculus will be born rather than made, but all the same, we will in fact, create her as a being that is quite literally a cluster of Magic Circuits. She will be extremely powerful as a Master in the Fifth War, should she be required to step forward as the next one, and perhaps an even more powerful sacrifice as the Grail Vessel because of it, which may be in our favor. This, I have decided, in part because of the convenience, but also in the hope that this may serve as extra incentive for the two of you to win this Fourth War at all costs. If you are victorious, then you need not worry, and your child may live out the rest of her days as normally as one such as she can. If not, well then, at the very least what will come of it is an opportunity in the War that would follow to see just how far our potential with homunculus creation can really go. It's almost as though we are creating an entirely new life form. I must admit my brain positively _thirsts _to know what would happen."

Kiritsugu clenched and unclenched his fists. He knew that after all this he and Irisviel were just Acht's puppets, but for the child they wanted to have, utterly ignoring the principle he had set for himself that all lives were equal, that not even one of his own flesh and blood could be counted as any greater than another—

"Elder, you—"

But then Irisviel reached out and grabbed Kiritsugu by the arm. "It's fine," she said, both to him and to Acht. "As you wish, Grandpapa, that's how it will be."

"Good." Acht steepled his fingers together. "We'll make the legal preparations on our end for the marriage, and as far the conception of the child is concerned, I give you leave to handle the process as you wish, but I do ask that the two of you deliver your cells to me such that I may apply the necessary alchemic procedures to Kiritsugu Emiya's and then implant them in Irisviel's and reinsert them into her functioning womb," and the smile he gave was a strangely lecherous one that caused the knife blade of anger drilling into Kiritsugu's heart to twist.

Even so, Irisviel remained obedient to Jubstacheit and ushered the two of them out of the drawing room, whereupon they retreated to Kiritsugu's office as Kiritsugu broke free of Irisviel's grip and stormed up there in his growing fury. The moment she closed the door behind them he turned on her.

"Why did you stop me?" he demanded. "I know you have no experience yet with such things, but do you have any idea what you're doing, allowing a being that will be _our _child before it's even born to be—?"

"Please don't say a word against Grandpapa," Irisviel cut across him, her tone strangely dark. "He'll cast you out if you do, and you know it. You'll lose everything you've fought for to get this far. I won't let that happen, not after everything you've been through."

"But at the cost of a child's life? _Our _child?" Kiritsugu kicked the leg of his desk, as angry with himself as he was with Acht, because if he had to face the truth of himself, it was the fact that the part of him that worked to always balanced the scales completely agreed with Acht's strategy, and he was unable to not be disgusted with himself for it.

He sought to cleanse himself of that deep and painful guilt by lashing out against the Einzbern family head. "You don't understand now, but I guarantee that when you _have _that child, the truth of all of this will weigh on you more than—"

"We'll win," Irisviel cut across him again, very quietly, her eyes regaining that steely shine when she became grittily determined in herself. "We will. We must. Now, more than ever. And then you'll come home, Grail in hand, and the world will be healed, and you can take our child far away from this place and love it with all you have in your heart."

Kiritsugu's anger vaporized as he stared at the tears that began to fall like drops of rain from Irisviel's crimson eyes. He realized then that the mere idea of bearing Kiritsugu's child was already creating a change in Irisviel, unprecedented by anyone. She had come up with this idea for his sake, and now all that could shatter into nothing but more dark despair if failure to obtain the Grail was all they could accomplish. Now he felt nothing but chagrin for having vituperated Irisviel so. True, he had a point, she had yet to actually _have _the child they planned, but still…the personality she had acquired was far too pure for him to expect her to ever consider acting on an impulse of cruelty.

Not like him. He who could still very well be the sort of man that would kill his own child without hesitation if it meant saving the entire world in exchange.

"Iri…I…I'm sorry."

Softened, Kiritsugu closed the gap between them and took Irisviel in his arms. Only then did she allow the full breadth of her anguish over this situation to break free, and wept into his shoulder as hard as she had the day she'd wept over the dead baby birds, if not harder.

Maybe it was because of that day that she could already comprehend what it meant to give birth to a child she knew could very well be doomed to an ill fate from the start. As he realized this, Kiritsugu held this woman whom he loved even tighter, loving her all the more dearly for it. That and the fact that in the way she clung to him, it was clear that there hadn't even been a need for him to apologize in the first place, for she had already forgiven him. That was how it would always be between them, it seemed.

And even as anger over Jubstacheit's decision to make their child into a tool like its mother throbbed in his chest, what won over that was his far greater desire to comfort Irisviel. When she cried as much as she could over it, what he wanted most in that moment was to coax out of her that smile he loved so much to see.

He leaned over and touched his lips to her soft, tear-stained cheek. "So then…I suppose this narrows down my options as far as thinking up a name, since the child's guaranteed to be female, am I correct?"

Irisviel nodded. "That's always been the tradition."

"Good. Then I'll make her a girl as happy as I'll make her mother."

"Kiritsugu…."

"And in the meantime, why don't you and I take one our walks outside, while it's still daylight?"

Kiritsugu could sense her inability to speak for her gratitude towards him as he took her hand in his. Or maybe it was from his behavior. He himself was a little surprised. Not long ago, such simple acts would have been so difficult and foreign for him, but just as he had taught her to be human, in so doing she had taught him to _remember _to be human, to remember the reason why he loved mankind such that he wanted nothing more than to save it, despite its flaws.

For now, his anger was wiped entirely clean from his heart as he thought of nothing but Irisviel's happiness. So the two of them donned their coats and sought the solace of each other's company outside, away from the stuffy oppression of the castle.

Despite her melancholy, Irisviel could never deny that she was happy being with Kiritsugu as much as he was with her, and he got her to smile far more quickly than he did when he made his efforts to make her feel better after she got upset over the dead robin chicks, because, as if in answer to her longing to see real flowers growing, amongst the white the two of them spotted a fleck of beautiful red. Only for a moment, Kiritsugu was reminded of when he'd picked up Irisviel's trail of blood in the snow from when he'd rescued her, and then he grew flushed with as much delight as Irisviel did when the two of them realized that it was an actual rose growing, intertwined with a thorny shrub, in defiance of the cold. It was the first flower either of them had ever seen growing out here.

"You see that, Iri?" He reached down to pluck the rose with his gloved hand. "It's a rose. A real one."

"It's so pretty," Irisviel marveled. "But wait: won't it wither and die if you pick it?"

"We can keep it alive for a while in a vase of water," Kiritsugu told her. "It'll wither one day out here too, but if we bring it with us, we can enjoy how lovely it is for a little while."

And there the smile appeared, and Kiritsugu realized with a leaping thud of his heart that Irisviel's eyes were quite as red as the rose's petals were. From then on, he would no longer think of blood when he looked in her eyes, but of roses. That thought was far more sweeter than anything he could have imagined.

"Okay," said Irisviel, and having gained her approval, Kiritsugu picked the rose and attached it to her coat with one of the spare pins she'd slid into her silver hair to keep it out of her face in case of wind.

As he did, it began to snow very softly, with great tufty flakes that sprinkled them both. Everything became quiet and peaceful, and Kiritsugu felt more like a youth than he had in years, to the point that the thick flakes of snow became enticing to him. He seized the opportunity to do something he'd never had the chance to do in his childhood, tipped his head back, and caught a flake on his tongue.

"What're you doing?" Irisviel asked him, giggling even in that way Kiritsugu couldn't help finding adorably endearing.

"Catching snowflakes on my tongue." Kiritsugu gave a laugh that reflected the sheepishness that came over him. "It's always fun for kids to do it, though I couldn't tell you why. It's like something that's just…innate in children."

"Hmmmm." Irisviel decided to give it a try, and tipped her head back to catch a few flakes herself. Upon doing so she quickly swallowed them, giving a squeak of surprise. "Ooooh, they're cold."

Kiritsugu laughed again, and looked up at the sky, spying a couple of winter birds winging overhead like tiny arrows. Then he said to Irisviel, suddenly inspired by different images coming together in his mind: "Here's something else I've seen kids do in the snow."

Stepping away from her, he settled himself on the snowy ground and stretched out on his back so he could fan out his arms and legs enough times that when he sat up, he left the impression of a person with wings.

"What is it?" Irisviel peered at the shape inquisitively as Kiritsugu regained his feet.

"It's a snow angel." Kiritsugu surveyed his handiwork with some satisfaction as he brushed the snow off his coat. "Now you make one," he invited.

Irisviel raised an eyebrow at him before taking him up on his offer, but she was as pleased with her results as she had been with everything she had made, from her attempts at _hiragana _and _kanji _writing to her painting with both watercolors and acrylics. She laughed when Kiritsugu helped her to her feet to show her just how well she did.

"It's better than mine," Kiritsugu declared.

"Oh, I think they're about the same," said Irisviel, and Kiritsugu noticed that she was paying him more attention than the two angel imprints in the snow.

He felt that quickening thump of his heart again as she surveyed him with a tenderness that had gained something new, an almost sultrily dreamy quality. Maybe it was an effect of the growing cold around them and the relentless fall of the thick, gentle snow.

"I think…I hear music," she told him. "Or rather…I'm _remembering _it. That song you played on the—what was it? The…vic-tro-la…you showed me when you taught me the waltz."

"Ah…."

Now the look in Irisviel's eyes made more sense. In fact, he didn't even need to ask what she wanted from him. As the snow went on falling so peacefully, he took her in his arms as he did when they first danced together, and led the two of them in a slow box-step, seeing and knowing nothing but the vision of each other's eyes and the sound of each other's breathing and the feel of each other's closeness. It was enough to tell Kiritsugu just how much he had fallen for this woman who was not human, and yet…he had helped make her so, and in so doing she had reminded him that he was still human too.

When the memory of the music ceased for them both, so too did their dance. The cold had grown such that their exhalations were almost bright silver in the approach of early twilight, mingling together like entwining fingers.

"Iri…."

There wasn't much more Kiritsugu could say as the two of them shared a tender kiss, surrounded by all that snow. When they broke free, Irisviel's face was red with both cold and happiness, and she giggled just to let some of that happiness bubble out before she embraced him, both for warmth and for closeness. Kiritsugu hugged her back with equal enthusiasm, though as he did so he spotted someone in one of the high windows of the castle spying on them.

With his keen magical abilities with vision that made it capable for him to see quite clearly even at night, he recognized the person as Malte. He must have just returned from his "trip". With resolve he held Irisviel more tightly, determined that for now he would do what he knew he wouldn't be able to do forever, and watch over the woman he knew he cherished with all his heart as any other man in love would do.

"I feel much better, Kiritsugu," Irisviel mumbled into his shoulder with a soft sigh. "For once, you were the strong one. And I'm glad for that." She clung to him all the more fiercely. "I hope that you feel better too."

"I do," Kiritsugu murmured truthfully into her ear, pressing his rough cheek against her smooth, sweet one. "And it's because…right now…I can be alone with you."

"I'm so glad." Irisviel's voice became watery, yet Kiritsugu sensed that she was still overflowing with happiness. "That being said, I feel no shame in telling you that now, for you and you alone do I work towards my purpose as the Vessel for the Holy Grail."

Kiritsugu stiffened, but went on holding her, and she ran her hand down the length of his back, pressing even closer to his beating heart.

"Don't think of it now: think only of the fact that for your sake, I have no interest in what Grandpapa and the other Einzberns dream of in their fight for the Grail. Now…I can only think of you, and how proud I am that I can help you achieve _your _wish. It's _your _dream I'm fighting for now. Yours and mine. Together."

Kiritsugu became easy at her tone, even as he felt new tears from her soak through his coat. Burying his face in her iris scent, he stroked her hair with great affection.

"Oh Iri…" he sighed. "Thank God for you."

* * *

><p>As Irisviel was asked not to take Kiritsugu's surname Emiya out of the Einzberns' pride in their own name, and as they did away with apparently excessive things like exchanging rings, the only physical evidence of their marriage that was ever produced were the legal documents that Jubstacheit witnessed Kiritsugu and Irisviel sign in the summoning chamber. Other than that, everything was left to the insubstantiality of air, and the abstract, as with Kiritsugu's and Irisviel's spoken vows to each other, and what they felt for each other in their hearts. If he had to be honest with himself, that was what Kiritsugu cared about most in all of this, but he knew that the paperwork was Jubstacheit's main priority, because the fact that Kiritsugu was marrying into the family, to <em>him<em>, just presented another assurance of the mage-killer's loyalty to the family's pursuit of the Grail.

Even so, Irisviel reminded Kiritsugu very much of paintings and icons of the Holy Virgin in churches he'd seen people pray to out of desperation when she arrived wearing a simple gossamer veil draped over her silver head along with her usual gown of white and gold. It was a terribly fitting image for one like Irisviel.

The whole thing was being rushed and treated as very business-like by the Einzberns, which suited Kiritsugu fine. The only thing that bothered him about it was that Irisviel herself was even being denied having the simple opportunity of being able to have the kind of bride's dream wedding that many women, at least once in their lives, dream about, even if only for a brief moment. Still, he was glad to see that for what she got, she was happy enough just being able to take his hands in hers and declare her love and loyalty to him for all the Einzberns to hear in that ancient chamber. The same went for him when he did the same, squeezing her hands back gently and making a vow of love and loyalty of his own, speaking with such urgency and power as though he were actively defying in any way he could the very fact that the day would come when he would betray these vows with one very simple act of sacrificing her life to the Grail. Everyone assembled there knew that, and yet he saw even such an ice queen as Gretel von Einzbern give an odd sigh when he spoke thus, as though even _she_ were moved. Even Malte appeared entranced by it, beaten into submission by it.

Only Acht remained his usual stoic self, very much winter incarnate, but that was to be expected.

Perhaps that's what prompted Kiritsugu to let his eyes flick in the old mage's direction once during his vow as a kind of act of defiance to him as well, secretly satisfied in knowing that with his success in obtaining the Grail, these senseless, bloody Grail Wars would no longer take place, and such fools as Jubstacheit von Einzbern could abandon such ridiculous ambitions like attaining the Third Magic.

The fact that Irisviel's love for him had, as a result, garnered her loyalty to _his _cause rather than the Einzberns' increased his pride in her, and bolstered his spirits as far as any qualms he harbored previously about how he would go about winning the Fourth Holy Grail War. That and, regardless of how rushed and mostly unromantic it was, the wedding proceedings themselves still had the sense of the two of them officially binding themselves and each other to their private pact to reach the Holy Grail in order to carry out Kiritsugu's dream, and it felt so powerful to Kiritsugu that despite what would have to be sacrificed in order to obtain that dream—Irisviel's life—there was hope in that bond of love, perhaps because of the child Irisviel promised to give him.

Shortly thereafter, Irisviel no longer dwelled in a little room branching off the alchemy workshop where she was created, but with Kiritsugu, by his side. Nothing felt more natural than having her with him. When they returned to his rooms as husband and wife that night, Kiritsugu felt for the first time since that morning that he could actually breathe freely. In fact, in his mind, he stripped away all of the Einzbern castle save for this room, because this, for him now, was home, which was strange because it had been a long time since he'd had such a thing.

Irisviel crossed immediately to the window, amazed as she always was now with the brilliance of the moonlight. Kiritsugu watched her, doing everything in his power to simply be happy in this moment. His heart reached for her, and he joined her at the window, where she turned at his approach, as though the two of them moved in harmony with each other, mutually attracted and in tune with each other.

With great care and reverence, Kiritsugu took Irisviel's lovely face in his hands, smoothing the pads of his thumbs over her soft, ivory cheeks, so warm and so beautiful.

"Now…you are my wife."

His throat grew thick at the whispered utterance, and she stood there, speechless with love for him. He felt his soul fall deep into the crimson paradise of her eyes, as he leaned in and kissed her sweetly in the light of the moon streaming through the window.

When he pulled back, Irisviel sighed, glowing with contentment.

"I have a gift for you," he told her, running his fingers through strands of her silver hair. "Just something I thought you might like." He nodded to a package waiting on the little writing desk, net to the rose they had picked the other day sitting quiet in a crystal vase of water.

Curious as ever, Irisviel inspected the package briefly before unwrapping it. When she lifted the lid, she gave a tiny gasp of awe. Her crimson eyes sparkled like rubies as she carefully removed a beautifully made silk _kimono _covered in a pattern of iris blossoms.

When she put it on, she was radiant in her joy at wearing it. She twirled in front of the mirror, and she seemed to become a true iris blossom right in front of Kiritsugu's eyes.

"I love it!" she cried. "And it's so soft and cool…like wearing porcelain made into fabric! The Einzberns have one too buried in a closet full of treasures they've collected over the years, one covered in those cherry blossoms from those _sakura_ trees you told me about, but the pattern in this one is so lovely. Is it custom made?"

"It is." Kiritsugu braced his palm against a post on the new four-poster canopy bed as he bent over to untie his shoes.

When he'd kicked them off, Irisviel had withdrawn from the mirror. He looked up at her, and thought her such a pure vision that it hurt him.

"You came up with this beautiful pattern?"

"Well I chose it. I thought of you, and that one felt right."

Irisviel's smile grew brighter. "You know my name has nothing to do with irises technically, even though the word is in it. 'Sviel' is the ending. Otherwise, you wouldn't drop that and call me 'Iri' the way you do."

"No…but coincidentally…it's your scent," Kiritsugu admitted, taking her hand tenderly in both of his.

Irisviel's crimson eyes rounded out in her puzzlement. "I smell…like irises?"

"Maybe…I just imagine it…because of your name…even though it has nothing do with those flowers…but…still…." Kiritsugu found it in himself to look at her, and he could see in her wide-eyed, pale face that he was giving her an expression that while it was happy, it battled fiercely yet elegantly with the sentiments of grief and guilt.

_Iri…though I love you, though I've married you, though I mean to father a child with you…one day…I must…kill you…. _

Irisviel became entirely gentle and solemn, reaching up and taking his face in her hands, fixing her with eyes full of that same steely resolve he had seen before. And then she pulled him close, running her soft fingers through his dark hair. He slid his arms around her and held her with everything he had in him, surrounded by that iris scent.

In the gloom of their bedroom, stark in contrast to the silver moonlight spearing through the window, Kiritsugu felt that this wordless exchange was an entirely different vow, one in which they promised each other that they would reach the Holy Grail no matter what. And in the sobriety of that vow, love throbbed fiercely in his chest to the point of pain. He held Irisviel tighter, and coupled with this overflow of love that was nearly killing him yet at the same time making him more alive than he had felt in a very long time, there was also a suppressive darkness waiting in the wings, reminding him how fragile this was.

And he made his own personal resolution then and there that not only would he reach the Grail for the sake of the world, but for his sweet Irisviel's sake too. She was willing to go so far for him, a broken soul. He would do everything in his power to repay her for all of that, love her with everything he had in him, even beyond her inevitable demise, unto his own dying breath.

After a time, Irisviel's scent intoxicated and enthralled Kiritsugu such that he grew restless, no longer content with touching his new wife so reservedly. He pulled back, and he saw in her reaction to him that she could see a new kind of soft light in his dark eyes.

"I know Acht has particular instructions for us, and we'll carry those out, but to a point. I still want to have you as any husband would want to have his wife…if you'll have _me_ just the same way."

Irisviel's lips parted in a silent gasp. Indeed she had read much on the subject of acts of intimacy, and after all of Kiritsugu's wondering how much she thought about it concerning _their _relationship, the expression she gave him now was all the answer he needed.

He picked Irisviel up and carried her to the bed, laying her there gently before seating himself on the edge of it, bending over her, all his senses heightening with hers. He was very careful though, as if in the back of his mind he was afraid he would break her now, as he reached over and traced his finger down the side of her face, the line of her throat, to the curve of her breasts hidden beneath the silk _kimono_.

This was nothing like what he experienced with Maiya. And for Irisviel's sake, he wanted her to know, without the benefit of experience, just how beautiful he was going to make this for her. It was enough to quicken his breath and pulse in seeing how such a simple beginning touch from him could make her tremble like this. And he knew that the new, starlit gleam in her bright red eyes reflected the one that had appeared in his own.

"Kiritsugu…."

After that, there were no words, save for what Kiritsugu whispered in Irisviel's ear deep into the night. And he knew he'd given her something that she could perceive as preciously wonderful when at the end of it all, she sighed so happily against him, the both of them drowsy in their love. When morning came even, it felt as though the preamble to a new world had broken free.

Kiritsugu panicked for only a millisecond when he felt that he was alone in their bed, for he quickly sensed Irisviel near at the new vanity that the Einzberns had had installed in the room as one of their "wedding presents". He saw her seated there from behind, as well as her reflection in the mirror. She was wrapped up in the _kimono _again, her silver hair more delightfully ruffled than he'd ever seen it before, and she was tracing her fingers across her lips, and down her body, as with each touch she remembered where he had touched her the night before. He was glad to see that she appeared gently pleased with herself.

Allowing himself to secretly smile into his pillow, it was another "first-time-in-a-long-time" for Kiritsugu as he allowed himself, for once, the indulgence of sleeping in just a little bit longer.

Later that morning they extracted and delivered his and Irisviel's cells thusly as instructed by Acht, but even so, Kiritsugu and Irisviel knew without having to say it to the other that because of what they had shared the night before, not even this could take away what they had together. And in that simple truth, Kiritsugu finally felt a little bit more like the man of strength he had always wanted to be.


	9. Chapter Eight - Language of the Soul

**Chapter Eight**

**Language of the Soul**

Kiritsugu was fighting the strongest urge yet that he'd had for a cigarette since coming to the Einzberns' castle and running out of his preferred brand. But now that Irisviel was pregnant, he'd resolved to quit altogether for her and the baby's sake. Not that Irisviel had been a big fan of his smoking habit to begin with, but he wasn't about to complicate matters more.

Still, he couldn't help the itch for one as he stood at the window just outside of the very same alchemy workshop where Irisviel had been created. He brooded over the permanently frozen scene outside with a heavy frown, fighting against not only his desperation for a cigarette, but also many a word he would have like to have said to Jubstacheit, yet could not if he still wanted to protect his role in the coming Grail War.

So, left alone with such frustration eating at him, he waited, chewing on a thumbnail while Acht was in that chamber with Irisviel, performing his ridiculous adjustments on the fetus growing inside her. At its most basic, Kiritsugu was aware that, among many other things, the Einzbern patriarch was ensuring the sex of the child would be female, to fit the homunculus mold based on the belief that female bodies were best suited to be vessels for the Holy Grail because in terms of biology they were naturally occurring vessels for life itself, which was the reason a being like Irisviel had been gifted with a working womb in the first place. But then there were other things Acht would do, on a daily basis, to ensure the birth of a child that would be unlike any other.

It was entirely unfair, dooming that child's life from the start. Not that the fact that life was unfair was any news to Kiritsugu, but considering it from the perspective of the unborn, it was almost as if the world deliberately tricked any child that came into it that it was a miracle to be born until they come to grips with the hand they were dealt. In his travels, Kiritsugu had seen many people with his dark, cold, sad eyes, children being no exception. Some he had observed in heights of great happiness, blissfully ignorant about the suffering of the world, and others he had seen in the very thick of that same suffering, staring back at him with expressions as equally empty as his had been. No matter what though, any child that circumstance had forced him to kill had looked up at him with anything from an expression of the world having betrayed them to an expression of naive curiosity, right before he would pull the trigger.

Such musings inspired second thoughts concerning Irisviel's having this child, aside from what Jubstacheit wanted out of it. How on earth could he even begin to consider his calling himself a father when he had the blood even of children on his hands, the blood of _his _father?

But just as this new darkness threatened to swallow him like all the darknesses before, the door to the workshop opened and Irisviel appeared, looking a little paler than usual, but happy as she caressed the flat of her stomach with her hand. She had a reflective expression, a soft smile touching her lips, as though she were imagining the very tiny life already growing within, even as just a cluster of alchemically altered, dividing cells. And then she discovered Kiritsugu standing vigil there, waiting for her, and her smile brightened to its fullest, as though she were illuminated from within by pure happiness at seeing him.

And then she said, very demurely, "I told you didn't have to come if you didn't want to."

Kiritsugu shook his head. "I know. But why _wouldn't _I come? I'm your husband. That's all there is to it."

"I know you're still furious about all of this though."

"But my refusing to acknowledge it won't change anything. And besides, it's enough now to see that when you come out, you'll have a smile on your face."

"Ah…."

Kiritsugu closed the gap between them as Irisviel shut the workshop door. He offered his hand to her and she took it, and the two of them walked down the hall together, making for the library.

"How was it?" he asked her in a sober undertone.

"It was fine," Irisviel assured him, but something changed in that lovely smile of hers when she said this.

"Iri…."

"Really, I'm not trying to be brave or anything. If you want to know the truth of it, it's really _boring_. We don't speak, Grandpapa's too caught up in his alchemic incantations, and I just sit there while he pokes and prods at me. Ever since you and I started discussing things like emotional relationships between parents and children, I've really thought a lot about why is it Grandpapa always has me refer to him as such, aside from our…unconventional genetic ties to each other. I've made an attempt or two to build on that, but…it's clear that Grandpapa has no more affection for me than that of an artist who fawns over his own work. There is a _kind _of love to be sure, but it's rather selfish. He praises _me _because I am proof of _his _genius."

_I could have told you that_, Kiritsugu thought, but he couldn't help a small, secret smile of pride that Irisviel, in the end, had come to this conclusion on her own.

Irisviel went on. "It's nothing I can't handle, but the process itself is so tedious. But then I feel a little guilty about it because this concerns the child you and I are having, that's beginning to grow inside me. On the other hand, I feel much happier about it now I'm with you again."

The loveliness of her smile regained its normalcy, easy and true, and evidence of the woman Kiritsugu loved, her soul.

Which unfortunately brought up another cause of anxiety for him: homunculi, by definition, were self-functioning humanoids that were soulless, because they were man-made, rather than born. At the same time though, Irisviel had grown into something so much more than that, just because of all that Kiritsugu was teaching her, he desperately wanted to believe that in this way, she had in fact _gained _a soul, something his own soul could follow when—

"Kiritsugu?"

Irisviel peered at him with a mixture of concern and confusion for his suddenly withdrawn attitude, the way his walking pace had slowed compared to hers, to the point that she was tugging him behind her.

Kiritsugu looked at her, and he battled between feeling lost and feeling certain of himself. Heaving a sigh, he resumed his pace with her. "I think perhaps…today…we might begin a discussion on human souls."

"'Human souls'?"

"Yes. To start, how much do you yourself know about them? I would imagine that an alchemist like Acht would have mentioned something about them to you, even in passing."

"He _did _mention them, but _only _in passing."

"Hmmm. Maybe he thought you didn't need to concern yourself with them."

"Well he said that I couldn't possibly ever have one."

"Eh?"

Irisviel shook back her hair in that particular way she'd developed for when she was about to take advantage of the opportunity of teaching something to Kiritsugu, rather than it being the usual other way around. "Well, being a mage—if an unconventional one—you are familiar with the concept of 'origins', yes?"

"I—Yes."

Kiritsugu still wasn't sure if he would ever share with Irisviel the magical aspect of his decidedly non-magical weapons, like the nature of the "origin rounds" Natalia had made for him so long ago out of a powdering of his own ribs—one of the reasons that in his youth he had felt a mixture of both love and fear for the woman he'd looked up to as his mother as well as mentor.

Meanwhile, Irisviel was saying, "Then you know that to have an origin means to have a soul that sprang forth from it in the beginning, and that that forms the basis for their essence as a person as they are born and reborn over the years—born in the…traditional sense." She fixed Kiritsugu with an ethereal look in her crimson eyes. "I was _not _born in the traditional sense, so there was no possibility of my springing forth from any kind of origin. Souls are built over time from many years of rebirth, but I began as an empty shell with nothing but pure logic and instinct to guide me. I have sprung from no origin, and I have not spent centuries of rebirth developing any kind of soul as a result."

At such an explanation, Kiritsugu was overcome with anger touching him like frostbite. "_Kuso_," he muttered under his breath, at which Irisviel blinked, regaining her childlike awe at his habit of throwing out a swearword now and then—though since marrying her, Kiritsugu had been doing his best to reign that habit in.

"What is it?"

"I don't believe that."

"But…Grandpapa said—"

"It's bullshit," Kiritsugu hissed.

Irisviel withdrew her hand from him, and this time it was she who stopped walking. "Kiritsugu." While she still wasn't very familiar with Japanese swears, in her native tongue of German she could pick them out with relative ease, especially when it came to the accompanying tone of voice.

Kiritsugu gave an exasperated sigh, stopping too, tipping his head back and raising his eyes to the vaulted hall ceiling. "I'm sorry, Iri. I do _know _about origins, and I've used such power to my advantage in the past. But I can't believe…after you…that that's all there is…to gain a soul. Saying someone like you can never possibly possess one…." He shook his head. "It's bullshit."

"Kiritsugu—"

"Nonsense then."

"But—"

"It's true, you haven't developed a soul in the _traditional_ way—through generations of rebirth—but you've evolved…in your _own _way."

Kiritsugu at last fixed his eyes with Irisviel's wide ones, and when he did, he saw in her a spark of something that might have been hope.

Did the fact that Irisviel had been given the impression that she would never possess a soul, now that she'd learned of emotions, lure her into a secret despair?

When her husband considered this, he had no choice but to very contritely turn gentle, as he always did with her in the end. Apologetically, and with rare timidity, he offered her his hand again.

"Here. I'll show you."

Irisviel considered him, but she only had to think about it for a moment. She too became gentle again, and accepted his hand, forgiving him his anger, as she always did and always would.

Up in the library, he went over books of philosophy and theology and stories and poetry that all had their own interpretations of the soul, and how they all seemed to be pointing to a truth that the soul existed, but had different ways of expressing that truth. It would become one of the more engrossing discussions of theirs in Kiritsugu's recollections, but that was really saying something since every discussion the two of them had and would have would, to him, be something worth recollecting.

They began with the philosophy and theology texts first to provide a basis for study, or at least all of what the Einzberns had available in the library, but that was an impressive amount, to say the least. As for poetry, that was no less so. In addition to the plethora of Japanese poetry that Kiritsugu had (admittedly) been surprised to discover, there was of course many Western classics, though not all of them were of Anglo-Saxon or Germanic, or even Latin or Greek in origin: there were some notable Spanish works as well, among others.

Kiritsugu passed his hand over one of these and opened to a chapter dedicated to poetry out of South America. He came across the name of a very famous Chilean poet by the name of Pablo Neruda.

"This man here," he said, tapping the name on the page, "says that 'laughter is the language of the soul'. When you developed your own sense of humor, learned how to laugh and what that meant, to me, that alone would be proof enough that you've gained a soul of your own."

"'Laughter is the language of the soul…'" Irisviel mused aloud. "Yes, that_ does _make sense. After all, from the footage you've brought me of wild animals, not a one of them ever did anything like laugh. Well, the hyenas did, but you said that was just coincidentally the sound they made, that to humans it _resembles _laughter, but it has nothing to do with anything being found humorous, so it doesn't count."

Kiritsugu contemplated her as she read over one of Neruda's poems. "But yours…it's sincere."

Irisviel looked up at him and smiled, and while Kiritsugu sensed that in that smile she had found some respite in what he was telling her, there was a perceptiveness to it that he had to question.

"What is it?"

"Kiritsugu…are you…trying to reassure yourself as well?"

"I—" Kiritsugu swallowed, feeling as caught off-guard as the day Irisviel had first brought up the subject of love.

Why did she have to be able to see things so clearly, as if she had known who he was from the very start? Even as he knew that this was part of what it meant to love someone, to share a life with them by sharing with each other what each possessed in the depths of their hearts, he was very much guarded about it. Irisviel had certainly managed to get in far deeper than anyone else ever had, but ironically that just made it more difficult.

But then all at once she was able to read his silence for what it was, and said, very quietly, "I admit, when I realized I loved you…this _did _cross my mind…but now…I want to believe that you really _have _given me soul…and…."

There was no need to elaborate, to belabor the fact that deep inside Kiritsugu had begun to acknowledge that he did in fact fear the possibility that after all he would go through, even after the dim hope of reclaiming their future child's life, that not even in his own death would he ever be able to find Irisviel again. It was enough that her words and their implication moved Kiritsugu beyond anything he ever could have imagined, since for the longest time he'd utterly abandoned the idea of letting his heart grow so vulnerable again. But it was past being too late to prevent that anymore. Still, even as he felt that sensation of a blade running him through, for the first time since the day he sunk Natalia, if not before then, he felt too the threat of tears, and it was all he could do to hold them back so Irisviel wouldn't see.

No. No matter what, that was the one thing she could _not_ see. He could not _afford _for her to see, nor could he afford to let it happen. Between them, _her_ tears were the only tears he would permit to be shed.

That didn't mean though that he didn't find solace when she reached across the table and took his hand in hers. He clung to that hand, and went on reflecting the smile she was giving him, revealing nothing of the struggle within himself not to break.

And though Irisviel's smile was so full of pride and joy in herself, it _was_ possible that she sensed that even when her husband was happy he was still in pain—which was entirely true for Kiritsugu, unfortunately. His life had taught him, among other things, that he would always have to be prepared to mourn those he grew close to despite his efforts not to, because it always seemed that in the end, he would lose them. With Irisviel, he had been more than certain of that from the start.

Yet she had convinced him to take a chance, because she wanted to give him a child, a future of his own that he could live for. And, truth be told, he had been foolishly too far gone in love with her to go on denying it in the end, too desperate for a reprieve from his own painful loneliness.

Something in Irisviel though spoke so deeply to him as he was indeed reminded as the two of them retired to their room later that evening, the darkness of the snowy night almost taunting Kiritsugu from the window.

"Kiritsugu?"

Irisviel crossed the room from her vanity, where she'd finished brushing out her long silver hair, swathed in a silken nightgown that was much like the gold and white gown she wore by day. The silk itself was a delicate ivory color, and something else Kiritsugu had picked out for his wife as a kind of wedding present.

She was so soft...and so lovely...and it hurt him, not out of anything contrived—like a horribly written paperback romance—but because he wanted to be nothing but kind to her and make her happy, and yet, one day—

"You're still troubled," Irisviel observed matter-of-factly.

"Yes." Kiritsugu's voice came out in a whispered rasp. It was all he could manage.

And when Irisviel urged him with, "Tell me," he shook his head, insisting there was nothing more he had to say. She heaved a sigh that expressed a sense of defeat in her as he at last undid the buttons on the suit jacket he went on wearing even as he maintained temporary leave from his assassination work.

When he slid his shirt off next, it revealed his lean, bare back, at which point it appeared Irisviel found it in herself to ask about the oddly incomplete Magic Crest etched into it.

"I noticed before, but…right now I thought I could bring it up," she said.

At this, Kiritsugu couldn't help a reminiscing smile as he recalled the reason why asking about his Crest when she had seen it before hadn't exactly been good timing.

"It was from my father, Norikata," he explained. "But Natalia, in her bid to—in a way—adopt me, was only able—through supplications to the Mage's Association—to get part of it transferred to me. That's why it's incomplete." He still didn't go into anything further, like the existence and nature of his origin rounds.

Irisviel was now up on the mattress of their bed with her legs tucked underneath her, granting him breathing space. "I see."

Kiritsugu looked around and found her tracing circular patterns in the comforter with her finger.

"Do you…ever…miss him?" she asked him.

"Who? My father?"

"Yes."

"Hm. Well, I haven't really thought about him in a while but…. You know, I don't know. I don't even know…if I really miss Natalia anymore. I mean…I suppose at least, in her case, I sometimes catch myself finding things I wish I could tell her—and then there are the things I've wished I could tell her from the moment I felled her plane but…." Kiritsugu gave a sad, humorless laugh. "Maybe that's why I still wear this damn thing." He pensively stroked the black fabric of his suit jacket.

"Because you're subconsciously grieving?" Irisviel asked him pointe blank.

Kiritsugu dared to meet her crimson gaze, and the look she gave him was that sage one of hers that seemed particular to Einzbern homunculi.

No. Irisviel was her own person. She had to be. Because if she wasn't—

"Iri…."

Kiritsugu reached for his wife, feeling the inside of his stomach churning painfully with sensations of a building anxiety inside of him. And Irisviel heeded his summons and slid into the embrace he desired so desperately from her.

"Hold me as tight as you can," he murmured into her shoulder. "I don't even care if you squeeze too hard, if you hurt me. I just…need to feel you holding me as tight as possible."

"Okay." Irisviel sounded a little taken aback, but also still very understanding somehow.

So she hugged him very tight, so tight that he could feel his heart knocking against hers, and he clutched her all the tighter for it himself. And then he just concentrated on breathing in and out, her iris scent, walking the razor's edge of maintaining his sanity.

In his dreams that followed him in sleep, there arose a clear image of a girl he once knew, sparkling like the warm seawater, her skin browned to golden by the sun, her white dress hugging the curves of her body in a way that Kiritsugu had just been beginning to notice.

She laughed and waved at him from the beach.

Kiritsugu waved back. "Shirley!"

"Hey there, Kerry!" She gave him a playful nudge in the shoulder with her knuckles and then laughed and pointed at him, teasing. "Ah-ah, you flinched."

"Yeah, you got me." Kiritsugu rubbed his shoulder with boyish embarrassment, keener on admitting defeat than admitting that the real reason he'd flinched was because of the pleasant spark he'd felt at her lightning-quick touch.

"Well, I'll let it go this time." Shirley shook her ponytail superiorly. "I don't want to spoil your seeing such an awesome view. I always love the sea at sunset, you know? It's like it's bathed in glittering gold."

"Eh?" Kiritsugu tilted his head to one side. He'd never seen such a poetic side to her. She was definitely spritely and energetic and enthusiastic, and had an active imagination that fed off the legends of Arimago Island, but he'd never heard her wax lyrical about anything—except his father's work maybe.

And then she turned to him, her face so full of eagerness. "Tell me, Kerry: what kind of man do you want to grow up to be?"

"I…."

He hadn't been able to tell her then, and he still couldn't now. But when he didn't answer, her mood shifted to something very dark and very much unlike her. Now she outright glared at him as she demanded he give her a straight answer. Her eyes turned to vampiric red as she turned on him, and he soon realized that her face and her white dress were covered in blood.

"Why didn't you kill me, Kerry?" she growled. "It would have been so easy, but you were a weak, scared, little boy who couldn't act when he needed to…."

Kiritsugu, backed into a tree and trembling, felt like that frightened little boy again as he squeaked, "Sh-Shirley…."

"Kiritsugu."

Kiritsugu turned and came face to face with his father, who he hadn't realized until now had always possessed a certain emptiness in his eyes.

_And I…inherited those eyes…. _

"Dad…" Kiritsugu croaked.

And then he found himself drowning in a sea of faces, all people he had killed, reaching out to him and begging to know why he wasn't able to save _them_, why _they _had had to be the ones to suffer death at his hands, regardless of their moral grounding in life?

And then Shirley, twisted into something demonic beyond the person she had truly been, shrieked, "_Who died and made you God_?!" before she managed to be the first among the crowd of the abandoned and the murdered to grab a hold of him and wrap her hands around his throat, pressing, harder and harder, down on his neck—

"_Shir…ley…._"

Even as Kiritsugu accepted that he deserved this onslaught, his survival instincts kicked in and he clawed at those hands he had once loved to release him as his windpipe grew smaller and smaller, all of those sad eyes watching him die as pitilessly as he had regarded them when he'd killed them—men, women, children—he had told them all with his eyes that their lives were worth nothing when compared to the larger picture, that no one life was worth saving, only the quantity mattered, because that was the only path that could be possible in such a sick world—

Still, he couldn't help gasping, "_Please_," as the last of the air in his lungs escaped him, no longer able to breathe—

He came awake, the dream falling away like a shattering of glass, and air flooded his lungs so violently—at least that's what it felt like after believing that he had been unable to draw breath—that he coughed harshly on it, leaping up into a sitting position, still clawing at his throat with his hands as he had in the dream.

He was shaking and covered in sweat, the bedroom dark and the light from the fireplace low from the dying embers. Still he coughed as he dragged more precious air into his lungs, but as reality fell back into place he let his hands relax, instead passing them over his chest to feel the pounding of his heart.

And then he felt the soft stirring beside him, and with a happiness he couldn't have fathomed he felt Irisviel there, sitting up beside him, touching him without hesitation, slipping her arms carefully around him and pressing her cheek against his bare shoulder.

"My love, what is it? You seem like you're terrified out of your mind."

"It's fine…it was just a nightmare."

"A nightmare?"

"A dream where something awful happens, instead of something pleasant." At this, Kiritsugu gave a bitter chuckle, his heart rate slowing to normal.

"Heavens, you're shaking," Irisviel muttered, and like before they fell asleep, she held him as tight as she could, as if making an effort to stop him shaking so much.

Very slowly, Kiritsugu felt that peace that her presence managed to give him, despite everything, descend upon him. Gratefully, he reached over and stroked back Irisviel's hair, and then he lifted her chin to meet his gaze.

"Thank you. I'm all right now."

Irisviel exhaled in relief. "Good. You had me worried there. I've never seen you like that."

"I guess I don't like giving into weaknesses like fear."

"Hm. But fear is part of how we survive danger, isn't it? We _act _based on fear as much as we do on love and anger."

"Well…that _is _true, but there is fear that compels action, and there is fear that does nothing but destroy. The latter is the fear that is nothing but a weakness."

"Ah…."

Kiritsugu heaved a sigh and pressed a kiss into his wife's hair before tucking her head underneath his chin as he held her back, just for a moment, reassured just in the feel of her breathing so gently in his arms.

But then Irisviel withdrew and peered up at him again, once more disturbed by something. Kiritsugu couldn't think what it might be until she thoughtfully and carefully reached up and touched the back of her hand to his clammy forehead, and he realized that there was a great difference in temperature between his skin and hers.

"Kiritsugu…darling…you're really burning up."

* * *

><p>Maybe it was the fact that for the first time in a long time, Kiritsugu and his body had come to a full and complete stop, physically and mentally. Aside from this business with their unborn daughter, there was, for the first time, nothing too immediate to struggle with. This pause in all the running around he'd been doing for longer than he could remember was now catching up to him in the form of a purging fever.<p>

At least that was the best way to explain it, as otherwise, there was really nothing wrong with him. Yes, there were aches and fatigue, but otherwise, there didn't appear to be any specific virus that would otherwise be the cause of such a fever. And yet, there it was.

And disregarding his protestations, Irisviel set herself to looking after him while he was ill. Meanwhile, it had been years since Kiritsugu had ever been looked after by anyone. It didn't sit well with him at first, and he was restless at being unable to do anything in the day that accomplished anything, and to simply lay there and recover with the help of fever-reducing tonics that Irisviel administered to him. It was all the more frustrating when Irisviel barred him from taking calls from Maiya himself, but then his wife quickly proved herself to be a formidable relayer of information, and truth be told, he knew from his bygone days of being ill as a boy that the only real way to get better any faster was to simply wait out the illness and get as much rest as possible, rather than push himself as he'd been forced to do in his older years.

So in the end, he surrendered to Irisviel. It seemed that when it came to his wife, it was all he could really do.

Still, it was strange in the hazy moments in which he would wake up to find Irisviel reading another one of the books he had given her, sometimes humming the tune to a song from one of the CDs he'd given her, a sound that was so sweet it was all like a happy dream. Or maybe it was the effect of the medicine. Truth be told, he didn't really care either way. He would wake up to this dreamy vision, half his face buried in the pillows on their bed, and he'd simply watch her, wanting nothing more than to float in this feeling of not having to concern himself with pressing daily details.

On the other hand, there remained the matter of Irisviel's continued sessions with Acht in the alchemy chamber so that old bastard could fiddle more with the life growing inside her. The fact that he was rendered physically weak made it more difficult to vent his pent up anger with the entire situation, not that he could really vent it even if he was able: he'd promised Irisviel that he wouldn't, if only to protect his position as the Einzbern Master in the Fourth Grail War. Because she did have a point, losing his position this way would make all he had sacrificed, his soul included, for naught. And if there was one of many things he couldn't abide by, it was meaningless sacrifice.

It was why he'd urged himself to keep going with what he'd started when he began his path of the assassin, to ensure that every life he took wasn't meaningless, but worth it in the grander scheme of things. When he saw that despite having killed his father to stop his Dead Apostle research and prevent more tragedies like the one on Arimago Island, that there were still unanswered for tragedies just like it all around the world regardless of what he'd done, he had to keep going in pursuit of his goal to give it meaning, to save as much of the world as he could.

Even with the barrage of nightmares, starting with the one he'd had when he'd first grown feverish, that were cropping up after so many dreamless nights. Again, he would have to say that it was his interaction with Irisviel that was the cause, but at the same time, in each instance where he woke up gasping for air, drenched in fever sweat, she was there to soothe him back to sleep, even when he made half-conscious protests like a child.

"No…I can't…" he'd moan. "I'll see them again…their faces…."

"Shhhhh, they're gone now, it wasn't real," she would whisper, pushing back his damp hair as she leaned over him. "I'm right here beside you," and then she would lay back down beside him and hold his hand until he found sleep again, the echoes of his memory of the dream floating away off his lips.

In the daybreak aftermath of this happening, he had felt nothing but shame in having been unable to keep himself from spilling his guts out with details of the dream, shame in having let that weakness show. But it kept happening, and Irisviel kept doing nothing but soothing him, and after a few more of these incidents, he quit wasting the energy it took to let it bother him. Somehow, the fact that she couldn't understand what it really meant to have such things haunt a person, it made him all the more willing to take comfort in her words and her presence. He held her tight against his feverish body, and it was all he could do not to cry out in a mixture of joy and grief.

He had taught Irisviel what he knew of the world because he felt a mixture of both love and loathing for humanity: loathing for how awful it could be, but a love for the innocence that it possessed too, like it was nothing more than an incorrigible child he couldn't help wanting to protect and save. For him, it was a constant ache that was always there, just beneath the surface, the root of all that roiled so desperately and so passionately in his heart. And it was through simple kind things like her being with him when he needed her, that he regained a sense of purpose in what he hoped to achieve in eventually winning the Holy Grail. And with the life of their unborn child hanging in the balance, that too, gave him strength and hope he hadn't thought possible, and more of a reason to not give into despair than anything he had experienced beforehand.

He was pondering such things as he stared one afternoon up at the ceiling in a feverish haze, having woken up for once to find Irisviel not there because she was with Acht in the alchemy workshop. Time was crawling by in the quiet of the castle, the warmth surrounding him and protecting him from the bitter cold outside. But then, just as he was considering drifting off back to sleep, the door clicked open and Irisviel returned.

"Ah, you're awake," she said with a happy sigh in her voice. "You're looking a lot better today you know."

In spite of himself, Kiritsugu tried to smile for her for the same reason she smiled that way for him. "I think it's just the effect you have on me."

She leaned over him and touched the back of her hand to his forehead, and he caught her iris scent. Then she sat back in the nearby chair, looking satisfied. "I think you'll be right as rain soon enough. Did you manage to get a better sleep than last night?"

Kiritsugu sighed. "Somewhat. But I think I'll fare even better now you're here." The most he could do was reach over for her hand, but he had every intention of holding onto it as long as he could.

As she accepted his invitation and interlaced her fingers with his, he gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and he looked up at her as fixedly as she looked on him.

"Iri…you're too sweet to me."

"And you're too careful with me," Irisviel countered, and he managed a small, weak laugh.

And then she ventured to ask: "These nightmares you have…you tell me what they are…but is there any point to them?"

At this, Kiritsugu's chuckle was dry. "Huh. Well, in a way. Much like laughter, I suppose dreams are a language of the soul too, though _much _harder to understand." Then he added, raising his eyebrows at her, "And you have dreams as well as the ability to laugh. So…."

"Hmmm." Irisviel smiled with that ease that Kiritsugu's affirmation of an existence of a soul of her own gave her, and then she took a moment process what he'd said about dreams being another language of the soul before asking, "Then…is _your _soul so full of darkness then, if you keep having these nightmares?"

"Ah well…it doesn't have to mean that, in order for someone to have a nightmare—there can be any number of reasons—but I think in my case…I would be inclined to agree with you."

Irisviel ran her thumb over his knuckles. "Kiritsugu…you've told me that you've led…by all conventions…a reprehensible life…and at the end of the day…it's all been in pursuit of your own sense of justice for the world. All of this has been to make the world a better place, but in order to carry out something so ideal and noble, you have had to do less-than-ideal and less-than-noble things…and on top of that…sacrifice the lives of those you've loved…." Her crimson eyes grew overbright as they met his. "I only hope…that this time…when _my _time comes…I can not only save the world with the power of the Grail…but _you _too…simply because…in the end…I grew to fall in love with you…."

Kiritsugu bit his lip to stop its telltale tremble, and quickly brought Irisviel's soft knuckles to his lips and kissed them, never breaking his gaze with hers until he grew so tired that he only had the strength to close his eyes with his hot cheek pressed against her hand. In the creeping haze of oncoming sleep, he murmured against her skin, "Please…don't leave me…Iri…."

"I'm not leaving you," she told him, holding his hand more tightly, as though to keep him from drifting away from her. "Sleep as long as you want, I won't leave your side. Even when the day arrives when I must fulfill my destiny, I promise you, my love, I will always be with you. So don't worry. Don't worry about anything."

He felt her teardrops fall upon his hot skin like a sweet rain, and he squeezed her hand back again, peeling his eyes open just enough to offer her one last weak smile as she smiled back at him through those bright tears. And then the last of his strength left him and his eyes fell closed as he drifted off again, and after so many nights the last two weeks of nothing but nightmares, his heart was at last at peace for once while he slept.


	10. Chapter Nine - Weakness

**Chapter Nine**

**Weakness**

This time, he dreamed of Natalia that night. And though she too appeared as a phantom to haunt Kiritsugu for killing her, she was cold and at the same time understanding in her anger. Probably she would come the closest to being a spirit willing to forgive him his sins, which somehow made sense.

"So you found a woman, did you, kid?" she asked with a bitter laugh before she took a drag on a cigarette.

"Hm." Kiritsugu couldn't manage to speak as he hugged the rocket launcher he'd used to take down Natalia's plane.

The two of them stood together on the deck of his rental boat as the debris from that plane fell into the ocean.

Kiritsugu didn't realize until now that he was shaking. This was actually more terrifying than any of the other victims he'd dreamed about. This mocking.

Finally he managed, "Natalia, I—"

"Tell me about her, this woman you love," Natalia cut across him, blowing out a stream of smoke at the ignited sky.

Kiritisugu hesitated, unable to speak again.

"Nothing?" Natalia tapped off some ash. "Then why don't you tell me all the things you said you were burning to tell me since the day I died?"

"I was…." Kiritsugu shook his head as though he were ridding his ears of water. "None of that matters. It's just my own guilt…following me wherever I go…."

"Like with that Shirley girl?"

"Yeah…."

Natalia laughed her humorless laugh again and took another drag on her cigarette. And after she exhaled another puff, she said, "You know, when I picked you up on that godforsaken island…I had my reservations about taking you in. Yet you turned out far better than I could've imagined. And dammit if I didn't get attached to you, even when I could see you were turning out colder even than me. But you already know something of this from our last conversation, right?"

Again, Kiritsugu was left with no words to say.

"All right…so this woman, does she at least have a name?" Natalia demanded.

Finally, Kiritsugu croaked, "Irisviel. Iri."

"Oh, is that right?" Natalia's smile seemed to grow a little less bitter and a little more sad. "And you have a pet name for her too? That's pretty cute, kid."

Kiritsugu managed an outright glare at her. Up to now, he'd had more than enough of this. "Yes. And I couldn't describe her no matter how hard I tried. She's too beautiful and too genuine for that. Except that she's more than pure, and proof that I still have a soul worth saving…and that's more than even you could ever give me. I know I didn't ask for it, and I know you couldn't have given it even if you'd wanted to…but still…."

He didn't care that right now he sounded like a high-strung teenager. He knew he could only speak like this to her because of what Irisviel made him feel, and because Natalia was so much more a mother to him in his memory than ever before.

Natalia raised her eyebrows at him, and then…she burst into a laugh that was a mix between a malicious cackle and a roar of joy. "So it took me _dying _to get you to learn how to talk back to me? I like that after all that you've still got your own brand of guts, kid!" She finished the cigarette and then tossed it into the water as the last of the glittering debris fell into the rippling, lapping waves. "Well, you're going to need that bite, in the end. Otherwise, everything _I _taught you will have been pointless when you finally reach that moment in your life when everything comes together." She heaved a sigh, one hand on her hip. "And then you die."

She looked at him again, and this time there was not a trace of bitterness—nothing but overwhelming sorrow in her frosty silver eyes the likes of which Kiritsugu had never seen.

"You'll kill her too, Kiritsugu, this woman I can see in your eyes you love so dearly? I warned you about what would happen, if you only do what _should _do, and completely ignore what you _want _to do. Even with the thin hope of a child waiting for you, the emptiness of what you've done will never entirely leave you. I should know…."

Kiritsugu suddenly felt those millions of apologies and other things he'd wanted to desperately to tell her—the same things he'd wanted to tell Shirley, and his father—crowding up the top of his throat, so when he tried to speak, he couldn't seem to a get a word out except—

"Natalia—"

He opened his eyes with an intake of breath, the dream gone and he still feverish beneath the sheets of his and Irisviel's bed. But very quickly his heart rate slowed, and aside from the clammy damp he still felt all over his skin, he did notice that it no longer seemed to really be on fire.

Tentatively and slowly, he sat up, feeling his forehead. But Irisviel, curled up next to him, stirred awake anyway.

"Kiritsugu?"

He felt her slide her hand up his back as she sat up and touched him tenderly. Relaxing, he gave into it and slipped his arm around her, pulling her close. Just for now, he wanted to be reassured by the feel of her warmth. And thankfully, in the dark, she couldn't make out the look on his face.

"The nightmares again?"

"Well…yes and no. It's…hard to explain."

"I see." Irisviel rested her head against his shoulder.

Kiritsugu considered her a moment, and thought his wife seemed a bit forlorn that this was all she could do for him, that it didn't seem enough to raise his spirits. And then the lingering fragments of the dream he'd just had inspired something in him, as he recalled a memory and at the same time referred to his task of thinking up a name for their unborn daughter in an effort to distract Irisviel from her (frankly unfounded) feelings of inadequacy.

It was a name Natalia had mentioned to him once, when she'd done the rare thing of revealing to him a piece of her own past about a childhood friend she'd had. This had been when he'd still been a boy and not yet her apprentice, and looking back on it now, he thought it might have been her way of showing him empathy towards the tragic death of his friend Shirley.

"Ilya," he murmured.

"Hm?" Irisviel raised her head.

"I was thinking…maybe that would be a good name for our daughter?"

"Ilya?"

"Well…we'll say Ilyasviel…with Ilya being for short."

"Oh?"

"I added the 'sviel' like in your name, much in the same way Japanese parents will take a character from their names to pass on to their child." Kiritsugu felt himself grow a little sheepish. "Do you like it?"

Irisviel tried the sound of it out, and the smile that spread across her face was proof enough of what she felt. Still she affirmed, "I do. But what made you think of it?"

Kiritsugu explained to her the context of his thinking of it. "Natalia shared very little of her past with me, so that piece of her life was precious to me in that I felt close to her for knowing it. And I like the sound of the name Ilya, with or without the 'sviel' attached." He heaved a sigh. "There's a sweet ache to it when spoken aloud. That feels…fitting to me. But…you have the final say."

"I agree. A beautiful ache." Irisviel reached for his hand. "You wouldn't have preferred something Japanese instead? I'm simply curious."

Kiritsugu accepted her hand and gave it a squeeze. "I wanted her…to have a name…that came from you…so she could carry that part of her sweet and lovely mother with her." He bit his lip, his throat growing tight as he once again felt the weight of what he would one day ask of Irisviel for the sake of his ideals, Natalia's words in his dream echoing terribly in his mind, the way the words themselves had echoed their last conversation before he'd killed her.

Irisviel gave a watery chuckle before leaning up and brushing her lips against his cheek. "You're too kind. And it feels like your fever might finally be disappearing. I'm so glad."

Kiritsugu shut his eyes and held his wife closer, returning her kiss by pressing one into her soft silver hair. "Yeah. Me too."

"Ilyasviel then," Irisviel sighed. "Ilya. It couldn't be more perfect."

Kiritsugu found he could smile, happy that Irisviel was happy. Admittedly happy that he was no longer feverish either. Though he still had his doubts, and though he still didn't like that he _had _doubts, never having had any faith in the uncertain, he made the most of this moment with the woman he loved, tucking it away as a piece of sunshine for when the time came for the dark storm of despair to fall upon his life again.

For now, he could protect what was precious to him, rather than destroy it.

* * *

><p>Now that Kiritsugu was feeling well again, he wanted nothing more than to stretch his legs outside. Irisviel happily joined him, and he happily looked forward to it as the two of them donned their coats and gloves, and Irisviel her fur hat. As it happened, she was eager as always to learn more Japanese. By now she was more than fluent in writing <em>kanji <em>and _hiragana_, but just as Kiritsugu had taken some time getting used to speaking in German most of the time, Irisviel was still adjusting to verbalizing in Japanese.

"I don't think pronunciation is one of my strong points," Irisviel admitted with a bashful laugh.

Kiritsugu casually dismissed it, with the Japanese particularity of waving the hand the same way a cat would paw at the air. "Don't worry about it. You're probably the only person in the world who could mispronounce a word in any language and not butcher it, because your voice sounds so sweet no matter what."

Truly, if it had been anyone else, Kiritsugu might have cringed a bit at the occasional mispronunciation of his native tongue, but in Irisviel's case, she could make anything she spoke sound beautiful, because it was _her _voice. And it made him consider the idea of one day getting her to sing with a voice like that.

For now, he was pleased to see Irisviel was pleased with his compliment, and it earned him a kiss on the cheek.

But then she teased, "Ah…you're in need of a shave."

"Hm." Kiritsugu rubbed his growing stubble self-consciously. "Yeah, you're right. I am." He chuckled. "Anyway, since you're so concerned about pronunciation, why don't we start with something simple? Here—" He pointed to a nearby walnut tree. "The word for 'tree' is '_ki_'."

"Kee," Irisviel repeated, and then giggled because she thought the Japanese word was rather cute.

"Good. And 'cute', or 'how cute' or 'he/she/it's cute' in Japanese is, '_kawaii_," Kiritsugu added with a rather playful wink.

"Ka-wa-eeee," Irisviel experimented, and then snorted again with laughter.

"Excellent. And this is what _kind _of tree?" Kirtisugu knocked said tree with his knuckles, peeking out from the other side of it as to instigate a kind of cat-and-mouse diversion.

"Well _that's _easy, it's a walnut."

"Correct! And the Japanese word for 'walnut' is '_kurumi_'—ah, except this one, this is a _kind _of walnut called a 'wingnut', which in Japanese is called '_cho natto_'."

"Koo-roo-mee and chow no-toe."

"Close enough."

He let Irisviel catch up to him around the tree, and when she reached him he tugged her close and dropped a small kiss on her small nose, and she giggled again.

For now, he reveled in the fact that he could, at present, abandon the identity of the other man that inhabited his body, the man that coldly threatened with a knife, interrogated without pity, or eliminated a crowd of people—regardless of their innocence—who stood in the way of justice with the simple pull of a trigger and a rain of bullets. Being with Irisviel, he had found a way to compartmentalize that aspect of his life at last, at the very least to keep from losing his mind over it. She made it possible for him to tear away that false identity and reveal the true self he'd hidden for so long, the true self that was simply kind and wanted everyone around him to be happy.

It began to snow, and with it descended that peaceful quiet particular to such precipitation upon Kiritsugu and Irisviel's laughter. Looking up, Irisviel asked what snow was called in Japanese.

"'_Yuki_'," Kiritsugu explained.

"Yew-wew-kee," Irisviel pronounced with a little overemphasis, trying too hard to develop an accent.

"And the color of snow is white—or '_shirou_'."

"Sheer-row…."

Irisviel tipped back her head and caught a snowflake on her tongue, like when Kiritsugu first showed her the day they found the red rose growing. The rose itself had long since withered in its crystal vase.

Kiritsugu caught a snowflake on the tip of his gloved finger, and for a moment caught the stark contrast of white on black before it melted into the leather. He caught another and managed to show Irisviel before that too melted.

"In Japanese, this snowflake would be called '_seppen_'. But there's another, more poetic term for it, '_yuki no hana_', which literally means 'snow flower'."

Irisviel's bright red eyes grew with wonderment at this, and caught a snowflake on her own gloved finger. She could still make it out, even with it being white against white, and watched as it melted away as well. "It _is _rather like a flower, isn't it? And there's something…comforting to me in the fact that no two are alike. I don't know why, I just like that fact so much."

"Hm." Kiritsugu looked up again, and breathed in deep, so glad to be out of bed and on his feet again. He'd thought he'd go insane from all of that inaction.

"You know, I wonder then," Irisviel began, "how is it that those Japanese mansions stay warm when it snows like this? Since the walls are made of paper and everything."

Kiritsugu turned his full attention back to his wife and explained about things like electric space-heaters and _kotatsu_, the blankets that go around the table to keep the people sitting around it warm.

"That's good then," said Irisviel. "From those pictures, those mansions had such a mystique about them, especially surrounded by all that white snow. Like Time too was frozen, along with the land."

At the dreamy look in Irisviel's eyes, Kiritsugu ventured to ask, "You admire the look of those houses?"

A soft smile touched his wife's lips, and she plucked aimlessly at the fingertips of her gloves. "I think it'd be nice to see one for real. There were so many in those Japanese ghost stories I read."

"Japan holds much fascination for you, doesn't it?"

"Of course it does. After all, it's where you were born."

"Oh, is that all?" Kiritsugu teased.

"Well, no," Irisviel admitted, playing along. "If you must know, all those pictures…. Everything there has this unique art form. It's refreshing from what you find here. Then again…I don't have much to compare it too…" she added, unable to keep out the sober tone.

It pierced Kiritsugu's heart like a shard of glass though, but he did his best to keep it hidden. "Don't worry about it. You've done so formidably with what you've learned. But in the end I suppose I should have expected no less from you."

This brought back Irisviel's smile, and brighter than before, and that was enough for Kiritsugu.

"So you say you're proud of me?" Irisviel shook back her hair in that superior, regal fashion of hers, giving her husband a look of smugness.

"Very much so."

"Ha, ha, ha. Good answer."

Kiritsugu laughed, warm and genuine.

They passed the tree where Irisviel had discovered the nest of dead baby birds. But nothing like that could destroy Irisveil's serene joy in this moment, and Kiritsugu felt joy in his own way for that.

But then Irisviel winced in obvious pain, her hand flying to her stomach.

Kiritsugu stopped. "Iri?"

After a minute, Irisviel's face relaxed and she gave Kiritsugu her smile again. "It's all right. I think my session with Grandpapa earlier today was just a little bigger adjustment than expected. Our little girl was simply adapting to the strong new effects. She'll be quite the fighter then, won't she?"

Though Kiritsugu did his best to share in her laughing this off, it was difficult to ignore his apprehension over this business of taking measures to groom two homunculi at the same time for lives that were ultimately created for the sole purpose of being sacrificed. His growing anguish concerning Irisviel's fate and all that entailed weighed all the more heavily on his heart, and although he continued to conceal these feelings from her, he was finding that unusually difficult now. He had to look away from his wife this time as he realized they were breaking through his facade. He couldn't afford to let her see even a trace.

But Irisviel read something anyway in the way he increased the pressure of his hand on hers as he held it. "Kiritsugu? What is it?"

Kiritsugu was afraid to speak. "It's nothing." Against his will his voice came out gruffer than he would have liked.

Before Irisviel could press him further, he pulled her into his arms quite fiercely and held her as tight as he could, desperate to regain control in the solace he found in the embrace of the woman he loved. He knew then for certain that if it were up to him, if things were different, he would do what he truly wanted and do everything and anything to protect her and their unborn daughter. But here he had the audacity to love what he must one day kill. Logically, considering his ultimate goal, it was probably the stupidest thing he could have done.

And yet….

"Kiritsugu…." Irisviel was shaking nearly as much as he was. "What's wrong, my love?"

"Nothing's wrong," Kiritsugu lied, doing his utmost to keep the despair out of his voice. He hugged his wife tighter. "I just…want you to know that you should never believe for a moment that I don't love you. Can you promise me that?"

"Of course I can. After all, I have faith in you."

Kiritsugu was relieved to hear nothing but love and happiness in Irsviel's voice. He reached up and stroked her soft hair with the same reverence he would an angel of mercy—the kind of thing he could never be, but wished he could all the same.

"Good. Then I swear to you, no matter what, I won't fail you."

Yet even as he said this, Kiritsugu still felt he was lying, but it was the very best thing he could offer her in the way of protection. And once again he shut his eyes tight against the threat of tears.

* * *

><p>Even though Acht had only had a scholar's curiosity in the results of Kiritsugu teaching Irisviel about the world, where learning the history of the Heroic Spirit they wished to summon into the powerful Saber Class, Arthur Pendragon, was concerned, he was naturally adamant as to its being requisite learning. Although Kiritsugu continued to allude to his misgivings about his compatibility with such a Spirit, Irisviel had to admit that she was developing a kind of admiration for the man, that even in the moment of his downfall he remained true to his values as a king willing to do everything and anything to serve those he led.<p>

And Kiritsugu couldn't help but be a little annoyed by this, even though he knew Irisviel's naivety played a factor in it. Maybe he was actually jealous.

But the more Irisviel learned about the legendary King Arthur, the more her interest in people revered as martyred heroes was peaked, which also caused Kiritsugu some personal discomfiture. Though he couldn't blame her for one such as her drawing inspiration from such figures, seeing as how her path would lead her down the same road, it was precisely for that same reason that it made Kiritsugu so uncomfortable about it.

"You know, Kiritsugu, even though you carry so much anger for the Heroic Spirits, you can't deny the kind of inspiration their stories evoke," she said the next afternoon in the library.

"That's precisely the problem," Kiritsugu grumbled, suddenly itching for a cigarette for the first time in a while.

Irisviel frowned. "How can inspiring hope be a problem?"

After considering her and her question a moment, Kiritsugu was forced to admit that, "As smart and sharp and full of Einzbern wisdom as you are, this is something you just wouldn't understand."

"Because of my lack of experience?"

"Yes."

"Try me anyway."

Kiritsugu heaved a very beleaguered sigh. "No, Iri. Because I don't _want_ to try to make you understand. It's enough that you are aware that the world can be at once cruel and beautiful. Just let me keep these particular thoughts to myself."

"Is it because you really don't have enough faith in me after all?" Irisviel challenged.

Kiritsugu didn't answer. He could only think:

_No, it's because something that causes me such anger causes you such happiness. Because I envy your ability to believe in such fairytales. Because I don't want to see you suffer the same disappointment and loss of faith that I did when I realized that a "white knight" kind of justice alone can never prevail in a world like this. _

Still, the glare Irisviel was giving him now was nothing short of impressive.

"Is it because you think so little of my opinion?" she pressed.

And before he could stop himself, Kiritsugu retorted with, "Of course I value your opinion very much. In marrying you, I trusted you with my life, just as you've trusted me with yours—putting aside the unfortunate fact that I'll have to kill you one day. Then you can be counted among those martyrs you admire so much."

As soon as he spoke these words, Kiritsugu immediately regretted them.

The look Irisviel gave him was worse than any physical blow. Actually he would have much preferred that she get up from her chair and smack him.

But she didn't. She just stared at him with a mixture of anger, hurt, and...guilt.

That last one hit Kiritsugu the hardest. Irisviel had nothing for which she should feel guilty. The only one at fault here was he.

After she recovered from her initial shock, Irisviel asked, very slowly and carefully, "Why is it...that there are so many things I want to say to you, but all I can do is just barely hold back the urge to throw something at you?" Her hands clutching the book she was examining was shaking, the knuckles actually whiter than the rest of her skin.

"That...is anger," Kiritsugu told her solemnly.

"I see. And what do I do if I don't want to hurt you even when my body is shrieking at me to?"

"Walk away. Scream into a pillow. Go outside and wreck something. I can write you a list."

"No, that will do."

Just as Irisviel took him up on his first suggestion, rose up, and stalked with resplendent fury out of the library, Kititsugu felt the separation cleave his heart, and with a groan he massaged the flat of his forehead with the heel of his head.

In the old days he would have never spoken so, simply out of a fit of frustration. Now however, he was inspired to act on emotional impulses as if making up for lost time. Or something like that.

Unable to sit still either, he got up and paced the room, feeling much as he did the day he wrestled with giving Irisviel a choice in her fate. And even after, she had chosen him.

With an attempt at trying to see people like the great and noble King Arthur the way Irisviel was able to, he picked up the abandoned book on the man and flicked through a few pages of the text, much of which consisted of scholarly studies of the various works translated from Old English that served now as nothing more than dusty epitaphs to a man who had thrown away everything in the name of saving his people and had gained nothing for it. But all it did was give further strength to his belief that the man had been nothing but another shining fool to whom even his wife and most trusted friend couldn't be faithful.

He tossed the book back onto Irisviel's chair. Then he kicked the leg of his own chair, giving a snarl of fury.

"Shut up," he muttered under his breath. "Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up…bastard."

This was the life _he_ had chosen. He'd had no choice in the matter because the feelings that beat deep inside his heart drove him inexorably, and in those moments when he'd toyed with the idea of abandoning his goals, he'd made himself so sick to his stomach with self-loathing he'd scarcely been able to breathe. He knew no other way, even now, when he'd fallen in love with the very last life he would one day sacrifice for his ideals. And she was such a pure life too, and here he was, screwing up his efforts to at least give her as much happiness as he could. It could never match the debt he owed her, but still, it was enough that for all of that, his heart would forever remain true to her, regardless of what his mind and body did.

After so long of being driven by a single impulse, he was, for the first time, split by an opposing impulse that was equally strong. Still, he would overcome it. He had promised her he wouldn't fail her. She would make not only the last pure sacrifice this world would need to make when he succeeded in obtaining the Grail, but also the first that would succeed where other sacrifices had failed, and truly bring peace upon the Earth, forever break the cycle of hate, rage, and sorrow.

A painful need filled him now, and a very simple one too, just one to atone for speaking so cruelly as he did. Heaving another heavy sigh, he left the library.

But he didn't find Irisviel in their bedroom, as he'd assumed that's where she'd have gone. Nor did she appear to have gone out, as her coat, hat, and gloves were still hanging with the outdoor wear of the other members of the Einzbern family. He only found her when he retreated to his office. She was curled up on the sofa perpendicular to the desk, leafing through one of the books off his private shelf.

Before he could assess what it was though, she had already closed it, acknowledging his entrance into the room. And of all things, when she looked around at him, her silver hair spilling softly down her back, she gave him a smile, if a fragile one.

"I thought you'd come here eventually, but I didn't want you to find me right away." Irisviel became very demure. "Now that you're here though, I feel happy again. All the anger in me's gone."

Even though Kiritsugu was full of guilt, he also had to admit that he too was glad, glad that he could see her smile again, that she no longer bore any anger towards him. He himself forgot all of his frustration from before, and wanted nothing more than to keep her happy as before.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, closing the door behind him and sitting beside her on the sofa at her invitation. "I didn't mean what I said. Or rather, I didn't mean to hurt you like that. I just…."

Irisviel studied him a moment, and seemed to be forming a conclusion after quite some time thinking on something. His gaze flicked to the book she'd been reading, and got a good look at last at the cover. It was a tome comprised of the letters from soldiers to loved ones collected over time from various different wars—a personal collection of just a pocketful of the world's despair that he could carry with him in physical form.

As if….

"Kiritsugu."

Kiritsugu looked up from the book, meeting her affectionate gaze. "Yes?"

Irisviel tucked a few strands of silver hair behind her ear. "Even if you didn't say as much, I feel like…well, it's just a feeling but…."

"Iri?"

His wife met his dark eyes with her red ones more directly, leaning toward him. "I see now that…for you…well you…you couldn't believe in the kindness of this world…."

"Ah…."

"…so you…you were kinder than anyone else…."

Kiritsugu blinked, taken aback a moment. But her words quickly sunk in, and he had no choice but to push them away, because—

"That isn't true."

"Oh yes it is," his wife insisted, casting the book aside on the little table next to the sofa. "Even when you said what you said, it's only because your heart suffers for my fate, that even though you love me, your ideals force you to place my life beneath that of the salvation of the rest of the world."

"Iri—"

"But you didn't _want _to tell me that, did you? Because at the same time you want to spare me pain."

Kiritsugu looked away. "Well, you…."

"When I first met you," Irisviel told him, "I could form no real opinion of you. But we've come a long way from that first meeting, we both have. And despite what you call your many sins, what you describe as the crushing weight of all the lives you have taken in the name of your justice, you still have it in you to express and feel things like human love. True, it took your having to teach me such things to remember that you yourself still had those things inside you, from what I can tell, but just the same…they're there. What could be more real than the unconscious impulses beneath our actions? Things we can't voluntarily control because they're so deeply buried within us, forming the essence of who we really are. You can be anything you want on the outside, but it doesn't change the fact that you gave me something immensely precious from deep within yourself. The kindness of a man who is kind for no other reason than to see others smile."

"I…."

Out of the corner of his eye, Kiritsugu saw his wife pass her hand over the subtle swell of her stomach, as if trying already to cradle the life growing inside her, a strong life that he could live for when all of this was over. It was a small gesture, but it moved him greatly.

He reached over and touched Irisviel's face, admiring just how cute and lovely it was, how sweet. "Iri…" he whispered.

At this, the enthusiastic color rose in Irisviel's cheeks, her eyes shining, leaning into his hand. He responded by tracing the curve of her cheekbone with the pad of his thumb.

"Do you have any more Japanese words for me today?" she asked him, turning back into her old playful self.

"Hmmm…well…." Kiritsugu stroked her face a moment longer, then drew closer, threading strands of her hair between his fingers as he brushed it back. "Well…there's '_otoko_' which means 'man'…."

"Oh-toe-ko…."

"And '_onna_' for 'woman'…."

"Oh-na…."

Kiritsugu slid his fingers out of her hair and then touched the soft line of her lips, bringing to mind things that were beautiful and red. "And '_ichigo_' means 'strawberry'…and '_benibara_' for 'red rose'…."

"I still think my favorite," Irisviel admitted, "is '_anata_'…'my love'…."

She spoke this word quite perfectly, and it was enough that Kiritsugu could no longer speak. Unable to hold back any longer, he took her lips in his, softly and kindly. As kind as he could possibly be.

* * *

><p>After recovering from illness, Kiritsugu not only went back to work as far as monitoring information that came in daily concerning all that was cropping up in preparation for the Fourth Holy Grail War, but he also returned to his usual vigil outside the alchemy workshop while Irisviel went in for her usual session with Acht. And brooding out of the window, he contemplated the dual sense of joy and pain that loving Irisviel brought him.<p>

Not the smartest moment to provoke him.

"Ah, waiting for our lady love, are we?" came the sneer of Malte von Einzbern, who held a deeper grudge against Kiritsugu since that day in the foyer.

Kiritsugu turned a glare on him that spoke volumes. But since Malte's return from abroad, this was inevitable. And Malte was nursing too much anger towards Kiritsugu to heed the warning signs.

"Well it's no business of mine what possessed you to marry and impregnate a pretty puppet like Irisviel, but then maybe you did it out of shame that you were lusting after an empty little doll. You Japanese and your fetish—"

Before Malte knew what hit him in time to scream for help, Kiritsugu had him pressed against the opposite wall with a knife to his throat.

Kiritsugu couldn't help a bitter and derisive smile at the look of terror on Malte's face. "No, continue, please. I'm dying to hear more about what you think of my wife and me."

Malte could only choke out an incoherent sound of fear, and Kiritsugu pressed the blade harder against his skin, just underneath his Adam's apple.

But then the door to the alchemy workshop opened and Irisviel and Acht both appeared.

"Kiritsugu!" Irisviel exclaimed, her hand flying to her throat.

"What's this?" Jubstacheit rumbled.

Kiritsugu withdrew, turning from the gasping, whimpering Malte in disgust. "He insulted Irisviel."

Malte, who had sunk to the floor, clutched his neck and rasped out, "Bastard," to which Kiritsugu turned his knife on him again.

"Emiya!" barked Jubstacheit.

Kiritsugu's dark eyes flashed fire in Jubstacheit's direction now, which was enough to convince the family head not to punish him for threatening his grandson. And for Kiritsugu, it was enough to convince him to put his knife away and leave the situation concluded at that point. But he wasn't calm until Irisviel's ever-soothing presence was beside him, taking his hand in hers.

"It's all right," she assured him, and this quelled his anger.

He nodded a curt dismissal to Jubstacheit and the still-whimpering Malte, and then he and Irisviel left for the library.

* * *

><p>"Kiritsugu, I know you were sticking up for me and only acted out of anger on my behalf, but you really shouldn't have attacked Cousin Malte like that," Irisviel admonished later that night.<p>

They had spent the rest of the day in the library as usual, but had passed the time in trembling silence, save for a few murmured exchanges here and there. But now they were once again returned to the warmth of their own bedroom, yet the atmosphere was like that of the eternal winter outside. Irisviel was forced to break through it as she slid into her nightgown.

At her words, Kiritsugu, who was sat in a chair by the fire, chin resting on his meditatively folded hands, heaved a sigh as beleaguered as the one he heaved the day Irisviel had experienced her first sense of anger, and with him no less then too. "Iri…as your husband, I _am _sworn to defend your honor. Let me at least do _that_, since there's so little else I can do for you."

Irisviel paused in shaking her hair out of her face after letting the hem of her gown drop. "Eh?"

"It's nothing," Kiritsugu dismissed, ironing his knuckles across his forehead.

Yet he felt Irisviel watch him with concerned curiosity. And then, rather meekly, she asked, "Kiritsugu…is this…more of what you were feeling the other day?"

Kiritsugu looked up at his wife, only to quickly look away. But he felt her draw near and became afraid. Though he continued to avoid eye contact, he sneaked another glance at her expression, unable to help himself. "Even if it is, I still can't…there's nothing you can do…."

"Why not?" Irisviel demanded, though gently.

Yet already, making himself so vulnerable made it difficult for Kiritsugu to breathe, feeling as cornered as he did the day Irisviel first approached him about love. "I…can't…."

"What is it that Malte said that was such an insult to me?" Irisviel asked instead, switching tactics.

Her husband massaged his hands back and forth in his increasing agitation, his fury with himself for letting his weaknesses get the better of him. Indeed, she had gained more insight into his heart than he would have ever dreamed possible when they'd first met, but still, she mustn't see this very last shred of him, the part of him that was given true voice only once in his life, when he'd roared in anguish at the indifferent heavens in the aftermath of sinking Natalia. Unbidden, he thought of that last dream he'd had of her, and then immediately regretted it when it only seemed to make things worse.

Swallowing, he tried to speak and hide the tremor creeping in. "He…made it clear that there was no logical reason for me to love a doll like you. And he's right."

"I see."

Kiritsugu did not miss the despondency in her tone, and before he could stop himself, he looked up at her straight on again. "But you've become so much more than that. _I _did that, but then in the end I'll just…."

Irisviel's eyes widened as she watched him desperately fight the threatening inner collapse of his soul, and at the same time he grew apprehensive of frightening her.

He clenched and unclenched his hands. "No…I don't…I can't…."

But it was already too late. The tears betrayed him then as they began to fall. Control was steadily slipping further away from him, even as he desperately tried to hang onto it. Until—

"I can't…kill you…" he choked out. "There must be…another way…why can't there be…another way…?"

Unable to stem the flow of fresh blood from the wounds in his heart, he became dizzy with emotions he hadn't allowed himself the luxury of fully feeling unchecked since the day he killed Natalia. And much as he did on that day, as he bent beneath the weight of his grief, spearing his fingers through his hair, his shoulders shaking, he let out a howl of pain as he lost himself entirely in it.

And the tears went on falling, breaking free, so cold against his skin as he let out sob after gasping sob.

Before he could have a chance to resist her, Irisviel, standing awestruck as a witness to such open anguish from him, was suddenly there, slipping her arms around his neck and pulling him close. He tried pushing her away, but she held fast to him.

"You'd deny me this?" she scolded him. "When you did the same for me when I cried over the dead baby birds? I won't allow you to suffer alone this way."

Kiritsugu gulped enough of his tears that at least he could speak again. "But Iri…I love you too much…this was a mistake…."

"No, regret none of it, my love, it _must _be done, you said so yourself."

"I was speaking with the idiocy of a dreaming child!"

"That doesn't matter! A dream so pure is more than worthy of my life, if it will not only save the world, but you too! That's why _I _must be the one to do it, to die and fulfill my role as the Grail Vessel…."

"Iri, no…."

Irisviel buried her face in his dark hair. "Yes. Because I love you, I will do whatever it takes, gladly give up my life for your dream, for a world that no longer holds all the suffering that you have seen and endured yourself. Do you hear that, Kiritsugu? I have _pride _in my function now, just like you asked of me. I'm proud that I can fulfill this role as your wife. _Proud_."

Catching his breath even as the tears went on flowing, Kiritsugu at last reached up and took hold of Irisviel by her forearm, gripping her sweet softness desperately. "But I love you such that were you to ask it of me, I would die for _you_, without hesitation, that I would protect you with my very life. I shouldn't be…."

"But you _mustn't _waver!" Irisviel hugged him tighter, enveloping him in her iris scent. "You _must _succeed. For the sake of saving this world. And because I can help you make it happen. I can save you, just as you saved me. Remember?"

Kiritsugu nodded, even as his heart went on hurting terribly. It was enough for him to regain his resolve, because she had reminded him that no matter what, she would always be with him in spirit, and in the moments of despair that were yet to come, he could at least think of that, give his and Irisviel's love to their child, and have a future of his own worth living on for in the new world the two of them would fight together to create.

"Very well. As usual, I'm no match for you." He managed a watery laugh in spite of himself.

Irisviel laughed too, and he felt her tears fall like a soft, cleansing rain. "Just believe in me, as I believe in you, and all will be well. Even if it _is _with a child's heart."

Though it didn't need to be said, Kiritsugu knew then that he could trust Irisviel with his weaknesses as much as he could his strengths. She would take care of them both, and for that, he swore to himself all the more fiercely that he would do all he could to take care of hers in turn and make her the happiest woman in the world.

For now…for now, he was allowed to be that kind of selfish.


End file.
